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and all of them received a severe pounding. They returned to their boat just as the others escaped from the water, but the latter fled into the darkness as fast as their feet could carry them. Abraham and his fellow in the fight were both injured, but not disabled. Not being armed, and unwilling to wait until the negroes had received reinforcements, they cut adrift, and floating down a mile or two, tied up to the bank again, and watched and waited for the morning.

The trip was brought at length to a successful end. The cargo, or "load," as they called it, was all disposed of for money, the boat itself sold for lumber, and the young men retraced the passage, partly, at least, on shore and on foot, occupying several weeks in the difficult and tedious journey.

Working thus for others, receiving only the humblest wages in return, reading every book upon which he could lay his hand, pursuing various studies in the intervals of toil with special attention to arithmetic, discharging his filial duties at home and upon his father's farm, picking up bits of information from neighbors and new-comers, growing in wisdom and practical sagacity, and achieving a place in the good will and respect of all with whom he came in contact, the thirteen years of his life in Indiana wore away. With a constitution as firm and flexible as whip-cord, he had arrived at his majority. The most that could be said of his education was that he could "read, write and cipher." He knew nothing of English He could not read a sentence in any tongue but his own; but all that he knew, he knew thoroughly. It had all been assimilated, and was a part not only of his inalienable possessions but of himself. While acquiring, he had learned to construct, organize, express. There was no part of his knowledge that was not an element of his practical power. He had not been made by any artificial process; he had grown. Holding within himself the germ of a great life, he had reached out his roots like the trees among which he was reared, and drawn into himself such nutriment as the soil afforded. His individuality was developed and nurtured by the process. He had become a man after God's pattern, and not a machine

grammar.

after man's pattern; he was a child of Nature and not a thing of art. And this was the secret of all his subsequent intellectual successes. He succeeded because he had himself and all his resources completely in hand; for he was not, and never became an educated man, in the common meaning of that phrase. He could train all his force upon any point, and it mattered little whether the direction was an accustomed one or otherwise.

It was a happy thing for the young man that, living among the roughest of rough men, many of whom were addicted to coarse vices, he never acquired a vice. There was no taint upon his moral character. No stimulant ever entered his lips, no profanity ever came forth from them, which defiled the man. Loving and telling a story better than any one around him, except his father, from whom he inherited the taste and talent, a great talker and a warm lover of social intercourse, good-natured under all circumstances, his honesty and truthfulness well known and thoroughly believed in, he was as popular throughout all the region where he lived as he became afterward throughout the nation.

CHAPTER III.

THOMAS LINCOLN had raised his little family; and the children of his wife were also grown to woman's and man's estate. There had indeed been three weddings in the family. Sarah Lincoln, the daughter, was married to Aaron Grigsby, a young man living in the vicinity, and two of Mrs. Lincoln's daughters had left the Lincoln cabin for new homes. The sister of Abraham had been married but a year, however, when she died, and thus a new grief was inflicted upon the sensitive heart of her brother. Her marriage occurred in 1822; and as she was born in 1808, she could have been only fourteen years old when she became a wife. It is not remarkable that the child found an early grave.

During the last two years of their residence in Indiana, a general discontent had seized upon the family concerning their location. The region at that day was an unhealthy one, and there could be no progress in agricultural pursuits without a great outlay of labor in clearing away the heavy timber which burdened all the fertile soil. At the same time, reports were rife of the superior qualities of the prairie lands of Illinois. There, by the sides of the water-courses, and in the edges of the timber, were almost illimitable farms that called for nothing but the plough and hoe to make them immediately productive. Dennis Hanks, a relative of the first Mrs. Lincoln, was sent to the new region to reconnoiter, and returned with a glowing account of the new country. It is probable that if Thomas Lincoln had been alone he would have remained at the old

home, but there was young life to be taken into the account. The new sons-in-law of Mrs. Lincoln, as well as Abraham, were doubtless averse to repeating the severe experiences of the father, and with fresh life and enterprise desired a new and more inviting field of operations.

Mr. Lincoln sold out his squatter's claim in Indiana, and, on the first of March, 1830, less than a month after Abraham had completed his twenty-first year, he started for the land of promise in company with his family and the sons-in-law and two daughters of his wife. Their journey was difficult and tedious in the extreme. They found the rivers swollen by the spring rains, and through such mud as only the rich soil of the West can produce, the ox-teams dragged the wagons, loaded with the entire personal effects of the emigrants. One of these teams was driven by Abraham. Taking a northwesterly course, they struck diagonally across the southern part of Indiana, making toward the central portion of Illinois. After a journey of two hundred miles, which they made in fifteen days, they entered Macon County in that state, and there halted. The elder Lincoln selected a spot on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timber land and prairie, about ten miles westerly of Decatur. Here, Abraham assisted his father in building a log cabin, and in getting the family into a condition for comfortable life. The cabin, which still stands, was made of hewed timber, and near it were built a smoke-house and stable. All the tools they had to work with were a common ax, a broad ax, a handsaw, and a "drawer knife." The doors and floor were made of puncheons, and the gable ends of the structure boarded up with plank "rived" by Abraham's hand out of oak timber. The nails used-and they were very few-were all brought from their old home in Indiana. When the cabin and outbuildings were completed, Abraham set to work and helped to split rails enough to fence in a lot of ten acres, and built the fence. After breaking up the piece of inclosed prairie, and seeing it planted with corn, he turned over the new home to his father, and announced his intention to seek or make his

own fortune. He did not leave the region immediately, however, but worked for hire among the neighboring farmers, picking up enough to keep himself clothed, and looking for better chances. It is remembered that during this time he broke up fifty acres of prairie with four yoke of oxen, and that he spent most of the winter following in splitting rails and chopping wood. No one seems to know who Mr. Lincoln worked for during this first summer, but a little incident in the pastoral labors of Rev. A. Hale of Springfield, Illinois, will perhaps indicate his employer. There seems to be no room for the incident afterwards in his life, and it is undoubtedly associated with his first summer in Illinois. Mr. Hale, in May, 1861, went out about seven miles from his home to visit a sick lady, and found there a Mrs. Brown who had come in as a neighbor. Mr. Lincoln's name having been mentioned, Mrs. Brown said: "Well, I remember Mr. Linken. He worked with my old man thirty-four year ago, and made a crap. We lived on the same farm where we live now, and he worked all the season, and made a crap of corn, and the next winter they hauled the crap all the way to Galena, and sold it for two dollars and a half a bushel. At that time there was no public houses, and travelers were obliged to stay at any house along the road that could take them in. One evening a right smart looking man rode up to the fence, and asked my old man if he could get to stay over night. Well,' said Mr. Brown, we can feed your crittur, and give you something to eat, but we can't lodge you unless you can sleep on the same bed with the hired man.' The man hesitated, and asked Where is he?' 'Well,' said Mr. Brown, you can come and see him.' So the man got down from his crittur, and Mr. Brown took him around to where, in the shade of the house, Mr. Lincoln lay his full length on the ground, with an open book before him. There,' said Mr. Brown, pointing at him, he is.' The stranger looked at him a minute, and said, 'Well, I think he 'll do,' and he staid and slept with the President of the United States."

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