the desire to sell his little home, and remove to another, in some fairer wilderness. It is probable, also, that he did not like to rear his children in Kentucky. He had been wise enough to appreciate the advantages of education to his children, and it is quite likely that he shrank from seeing them grow up in a community cursed with slavery. The state having outgrown, with marvelous rapidity, its ruder conditions, and become populous and powerful, was already the home of an institution which branded labor with disgrace, and made the position of the poor whites a hopeless one. He could see nothing in the future, for himself or his boy, but labor by the side of the negro, and degradation in his presence and companionship.

Mr. Lincoln himself never attributed his father's desire to remove from Kentucky to his dislike of slavery, as a principal motive. Kentucky, more than most of the new states, was cursed with defective land-titles. Daniel Boone himself, with hundreds of others who had shared with him the dangers of pioneer life, was dispossessed of nearly all his lands, after having lived upon them for years, and rendered them very valuable by improvements. It was mainly to this difficulty, of getting a valid title to land, that Abraham Lincoln attributed his father's desire and determination to remove to another state.

Thomas Lincoln found a purchaser, at last, for his home. He bartered it away for ten barrels of whisky and twenty dollars in money, the whole representing the sum of three hundred dollars, his price for the place.* After building a flat-boat and launching it upon the Rolling Fork, he loaded it with his stock of whisky, and all the heavier household wares of which he was possessed, pushed off alone, and floated safely down to the Ohio River. Here he met with an accident-a wreck, indeed. The flat-boat was upset, and two-thirds of his whisky and many of his housekeeping utensils and farming and other tools were lost. Meeting with assistance, his boat

*William M. Thayer's "Pioneer Boy," a singularly faithful statement of the early experiences of Abraham Lincoln.

was righted, and everything saved that it was found practicable to gather from the bottom of the river. Landing at Thompson's Ferry, he procured carriage for his goods about eighteen miles into Spencer County, Indiana, where, in almost an unbroken wilderness, he determined to settle. Leaving his goods in the care of a settler, he returned to Thompson's Ferry, and then, on foot, took as nearly as possible a bee-line for home, where he arrived in due time. It was probably during the absence of the father on his preliminary trip that the mother paid her last tribute of affection to the little one she had buried, by visiting its grave, in company with her living boy-an incident which he remembered with tender interest.

This voyage was made in the autumn of 1816, when Abraham was in his eighth year, and it was followed by the immediate removal of the whole family. The journey to the new home was made overland, upon three horses which carried in packs the bedding, wardrobe and all the lighter effects of the family. The humble cavalcade occupied seven days in the journey. At the end of it, the emigrants met with neighborly assistance in the erection of a dwelling, and were soon housed and ready to begin life anew.

It must not be inferred from the character of the material which Mr. Lincoln received, in principal, as the payment for his little homestead in Kentucky, and transferred to his new home in Indiana, that he was addicted to the vice of strong drink. In those days, alcoholic liquors were in general use among the settlers, not only as a beverage, but as a remedial agent in the treatment of the diseases peculiar to the new settlements of the West. The same liquors were used with the same freedom among all classes at the East, at that date, without a thought of evil. Mr. Lincoln supposed he was receiving a commodity which would be of great value to him in the new regions of Indiana, where distillation had not been attempted; and he doubtless found a ready market for the fraction of the cargo which he had saved from the river.

CHAPTER II.

THE point at which the Lincoln family settled in Indiana was not far from the present town of Gentryville. The campaign biographers of Abraham attribute to him some valuable service with the ax, both in building the cabin and in clearing the forest around it; but, at the age of seven, he could hardly have rendered much assistance in these offices. We are told that he had an ax; and there is no doubt that he learned at an early age to use it effectually. Indeed, his muscles were formed and hardened by this exercise, continued through all the years of his young manhood. It has already been stated that he had no taste for the sports of the forest; but he made an early shot, with a result that must have surprised him and his family. While yet a child, he saw through a crack in the cabin a flock of wild turkeys, feeding. He ventured to take down his father's rifle, and, firing through the crack, killed one of them. This was the largest game upon which he ever pulled trigger, his brilliant success having no power to excite in him the passion for hunting.

Among the most untoward circumstances, Thomas Lincoln embraced every opportunity to give Abraham an education. At different periods, all of them brief, he attended the neighborhood schools that were opened to him. Andrew Crawford taught one of these, a Mr. Sweeney another, and Azel W. Dorsey another, the last of whom lived to see his humble pupil a man of eminence, and to congratulate him upon his elevation. One year, however, would cover all the time spent

by him with his two Kentucky teachers, and the three whose schools he attended in Indiana; and all the school education of his life was embraced by the limits of this one year.

It is very difficult for any one bred in the older communities of the country to appreciate the extreme humility of border life, the meagerness and meanness of its household appointments, and the paucity of its stimulants to mental growth and social development. The bed in which the elder Lincolns, and, on very cold nights, the little Lincolns, slept, during their first years in Indiana, was one whose rudeness will give a key to the kind of life which they lived there. The head and one side of the bedstead were formed by an angle of the cabin itself. The bed-post standing out into the room was a single crotch, cut from the forest. Laid upon this crotch were the ends of two hickory sticks, whose other extremities were morticed into the logs, the two sides of the cabin and the two rails embracing a quadrilateral space of the required dimensions. This was bridged by slats "rived" from the forest log, and on the slats was laid a sack filled with dried leaves. This was, in reality, the bed of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln; and into it, when the skins hung at the cabin doorway did not keep out the cold, Abraham and his sister crept for the warmth which their still ruder couch upon the ground denied them.

The lot of the little family, already sadly dark, was rendered inexpressibly gloomy at an early day by an event which made a profound impression upon the mind of the boy-an impression that probably never wore away during all the eventful years that followed. His delicate mother bent to the dust under the burden of life which circumstances had imposed upon her. A quick consumption seized her, and her life went out in the flashing fevers of her disease. The boy and his sister were orphans, and the humble home in the wilderness was desolate. Her death occurred in 1818, scarcely two years after her removal to Indiana, and when Abraham was in his tenth year. They laid her to rest under the trees near the cabin, and, sitting on her grave, the little boy wept his irreparable loss. There were probably none but the simplest

ceremonies at her burial, and neither father nor son was content to part with her without a formal Christian tribute to her worth and memory. Both thought of the good Parson Elkin whom they had left in Kentucky; and Abraham's skill in writing was brought into use in addressing to him a message. His imperfect penmanship had been acquired partly in the schools he had attended, and partly by practice in the sand and on the barks of trees-on anything and with any instrument by which letters might be formed.

sermon.

Several months after Mrs. Lincoln died, Abraham wrote a letter to Parson Elkin, informing him of his mother's death, and begging him to come to Indiana, and preach her funeral It was a great favor that he thus asked of the poor preacher. It would require him to ride on horseback nearly a hundred miles through the wilderness; and it is something to be remembered to the humble itinerant's honor that he was willing to pay this tribute of respect to the woman who had so thoroughly honored him and his sacred office. He replied to Abraham's invitation, that he would preach the sermon on a certain future Sunday, and gave him liberty to notify the neighbors of the promised service.

As the appointed day approached, notice was given to the whole neighborhood, embracing every family within twenty miles. Neighbor carried the notice to neighbor. It was scattered from every little school. There was probably not a family that did not receive intelligence of the anxiously anticipated event.

On a bright Sabbath morning, the settlers of the region started for the cabin of the Lincolns; and, as they gathered in, they presented a picture worthy the pencil of the worthiest painter. Some came in carts of the rudest construction, their wheels consisting of sections of the huge boles of forest trees, and every other member the product of the ax and auger; some came on horseback, two or three upon a horse; others came in wagons drawn by oxen, and still others came on foot. Two hundred persons in all were assembled when Parson Elkin came out from the Lincoln cabin, accompanied by the little