friend as well as a step-mother sprang up a devoted attachment; and she ever acted as if she said to him in tender tones of ardent sympathy, using the words of Mrs. Welby, "Child of the lost, the buried, and the sainted, I call thee mine, Till fairer still, with tears and sin untainted, Step-mothers are not all heartless, and those who, like the writer of these pages, have known the devoted care and tender love of a good step-mother, do not like to hear them as a class condemned. This second mother of our late President still survives to remember his nobleness of soul, and to mourn his martyrdom. She resides at Goose Nest, Coles County, eight miles south of Charlestown, Illinois. A few years after the death of his mother, a Mr. Crawford, one of the settlers, opened a school in his own cabin; and thither Abraham regularly repaired to add a knowledge of arithmetic to his reading and writing. His appearance was in keeping with his humble home. He was arrayed in buckskin clothes, with a raccoon-skin cap, and carried an old arithmetic, which had been industriously sought for his benefit. "His progress was rapid, and his perseverance and faithfulness won the interest and esteem of his teacher." His love of books continued, and he read all that he could obtain far and near. With the immortal dreamer of Bedford jail, he traced the pathway of the Christian pilgrim from the City of Destruction to his Celestial Home beyond the river; and no doubt he felt that he, too, would gladly follow such a path, sure as he was that his own dear mother would be one of the shining ones to greet him on the heavenly shore. He pored over such books as the "Lives of Clay and Washington," till the fires of a noble emulation and true patriotism glowed in his heart; and he thus daily grew more and more to be of the very spirit of which heroic leaders and wise counsellors are made. God was fitting him, even in his childhood and his youth, for the very work which was before him. Bishop Simpson expressed this idea in his funeral sermon at Springfield, Illinois, on the 4th of May, 1865. He said, "Mr. Lincoln was no ordinary man. I believe the conviction has been growing on the nation's mind, as it certainly has been on my own, especially in the last years of his administration, that by the hand of God he was especially singled out to guide our Government in these troublesome times; and it seems to me that the hand of God may be traced in many of the events connected with his history. First, then, I recognize this in the physical education which he received, and which prepared him for enduring herculean labors. In the toils of his boyhood, and the labors of his manhood, God was giving him an iron frame. Next to this was his identification with the heart of this great people, understanding their feelings because he was one of them, and connected with them in their movements and life. His education was simple. A few months spent in the schoolhouse gave him the elements of education. He read few books, but mastered all he read. 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Æsop's Fables,' and the 'Life of Washington,' were his favorites. In these we recognize the works which gave the bias to his character, and which partly moulded his style. His early life, with its varied strug gles, joined him indissolubly to the working masses; and no elevation in society diminished his respect for the sons of toil. He knew what it was to fell the tall trees of the forest, and to stem the current of the broad Mississippi. His home was in the growing West, the heart of the Re public; and, invigorated by the wind which swept over its prairies, he learned lessons of self-reliance which sustained him in seasons of adversity." Bishop Simpson's allusion to Abraham's efforts on the broad bosom of the "Father of Waters" was founded, doubtless, on the fact, that, when about nineteen years of age, Abraham accompanied the son of the owner of a flatboat, who intrusted a valuable cargo to their care, to the city of New Orleans. He was hired at the rate of ten dollars a month, and the twain composed the only crew. With only one companion, it was rather a danger.. ous journey. "At night they tied up alongside of the bank, and rested upon the hard deck, with a blanket for a covering; and during the hours of light, whether their lonely trip was cheered by a bright sun, or made disagreeable in the extreme by violent storms, their craft floated down the stream, its helmsmen never for a moment losing their spirits, or regretting their acceptance of the positions they occupied. Nothing occurred to mar the success of the trip, nor the excitement naturally incident to a flatboat expedition of some eighteen hundred miles, save a midnight attack by a party of negroes, who, after a severe conflict, were compelled to flee." In the spring of 1830, the Lincoln family again sought a new home. Their journey, in a region where roads were rough and railroads unknown, was made in fifteen days. They carried their goods in large wagons drawn by oxen, and Abraham himself drove one of the teams. They halted on the north side of the Sangamon River, at a place about ten miles west of Decatur, Illinois. While crossing the bottom lands of the Kaskaskia River on their way, the men of the party were obliged to wade through water several feet deep. So the journey was not ac LINCOLN'S FIRST HOUSE IN ILLINOIS. complished without some hindrances. On their arrival a log-cabin was to be built, ground broker for corn. and a rail-fence to be made around the farm, in all of which Abraham labored faithfully.* Those rails have been im In this work the Lincolns were assisted by a relative of Abraham's mother, named John Hanks. While this volume was in preparation, Mr. Hanks was in Boston exhibiting this identical log-cabin, together with other relics mortalized by orators and poets, and will henceforth be mentioned by historians. Sumner says, "These rails have become classical in our history, and the name of 'rail-splitter' has been more than the degree of a college. Not that the splitter of rails is especially meritorious, but because the people are proud to trace aspiring talent to humble beginnings, and because they found in this tribute a new opportunity of vindicating the dignity of free labor, and of repelling the insolent pretensions of slavery." The newspaper report of the first public mention of Abraham Lincoln as a rail-splitter is as follows: "During the sitting of the Republican State Convention at Decatur, a banner attached to two of these rails, and bearing an appropriate inscription, was brought into the assemblage, and formally presented to that body, amid a scene of unparalleled enthusiasm. After that, they were in demand in every State in the Union in which free labor is honored, where they were borne in processions of the people, and hailed by hundreds of thousands of freemen as a symbol of triumph, and as a glorious vindication of freedom and of the rights and dignity of free labor. These, however, were far from being the first or only rails made by Lincoln. He was a practised hand at the business. Mr. Lincoln has now a cane made from one of the rails split by his own hands in boyhood." of Lincoln's early days of poverty and obscurity. He is an honest-looking gentleman, with a silvery beard, about seven years older than Mr. Lincoln, but much more venerable in appearance. He can neither read nor write. He says that his cousin Dennis F. Hanks taught "little Abe" his letters. The log. cabin above mentioned has no windows; but a half sheet of paper oiled, placed in a sort of wooden shutter, admitted a little light when the shutter was closed. It is said to be truly a Union cabin, having in it sticks of oak, hickory, hackberry, red elm, walnut, basswood, honey, locust, and sassafras, but, it is believed, not a stick of pine. The dimensions are eighteen feet by sixteen; and it is nine logs, or about eight feet, high. It has a peaked roof, the highest part of which is about five feet from the level of its eaves. It was begun March 80, 1830; and four days were spent in building it. |