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that he heard the words of Christian doctrine, reproof, and admonition. At long intervals, Parson Elkin, a Baptist preacher, took his way through the region in which the Lincolns lived, and young Abraham, fascinated by hearing long discourses fall from the lips of the speaker, apparently without any previous study or preparation, never failed to travel far, if necessary, to attend on his simple services. The boy's first notions of public speaking were taken from the itinerant, and years afterwards the President referred to the preacher as the most wonderful man known to his boyish experience.

Thomas Lincoln wearied of his Kentucky home. There was great trouble in getting land titles; even Daniel Boone, the pioneer and surveyor of the land, upon whom had been conferred a great grant, was shorn of much of his lawful property, and a cloud was laid on nearly every man's right to own his homestead. Slavery, too, was asserting itself in the region, and, although a dislike for the institution of slavery did not unsettle Thomas Lincoln, it is likely that the fact that he was too poor to own slaves, and would be brought into direct relations with men who could own this peculiar kind of property, helped to make him dissatisfied with his surroundings. But the real cause of his hankering after a new home was probably his thriftlessness. Like many another pioneer, he saw something better far ahead. The tales of wonderfully rich soil, abundant game, fine timber, and rich pasturage that came to Kentucky from Indiana were just like the rosy reports of the riches and attractions of Kentucky that had enticed

the elder Lincolns from their home in Virginia, years before. So Thomas resolved to "pull up stakes and move on, still to the westward.

Thomas found a new-comer who was willing to take his partly-improved farm and log cabin for ten barrels of whiskey and twenty dollars in cash. This represented three hundred dollars in value, and was the price that he had set upon his homestead. Whiskey made from corn was, in those days, one of the readiest forms of currency in the trading and barter continually going on among the settlers; and, even where drunkenness was almost unknown, the fiery spirit was regarded as a perfectly legitimate article of daily use and a substitute for money in trade. Aided by his boys, Thomas Lincoln built a flatboat, and, launching it on the turbid waters of the Rolling Fork, which empties into the Ohio, he loaded it with his ten barrels of whiskey and the heavier articles of household furniture. Then, pushing off alone, but followed by the hurrahs of his two children, he floated safely down to the Ohio. Here he met with a great disaster. Caught between eddying currents, and entangled in the snags and "sawyers" that beset the stream, Lincoln's frail craft was upset and much of his stuff was lost. With assistance, the boat was righted, and, with what had been saved from the wreck, Thomas Lincoln landed at Thompson's Ferry, found an ox-cart to transport his slender stock of valuables into the forest, and finally piled them in an oak-opening in Spencer County, Indiana, about eighteen miles from the river.

Left at home, in their dismantled cabin, with a scanty supply of provisions, the mother and little ones made the most of their time. The two children attended Caleb Hazel's school, but Abraham found time to snare game for the family dinner-pot, and, in an emergency, the house-mother could knock over a deer at long range. One bedticking, filled with dried forest leaves and husks, sufficed for their rest at night, and, bright and early in the morning, the future President was out in the nipping autumn air, chopping wood for the day's fire. As the time drew near for the father's return, Mrs. Lincoln, leading her living boy, paid her last visit to the grave of the little one whom she had lost in infancy. And his sad mother's prayers and tears by the side of the unmarked mound in the wilderness, soon to be left behind by the emigrants, made an impression on the mind of the lad that time never effaced.

But when Thomas Lincoln returned to his small brood, it was not with any boastfulness. He had met with what was to them a great loss. Much of their meagre stock of household stuff and farming tools was at the bottom of the Ohio River. Leaving the rescued fragments in care of a friendly settler, he had made a bee-line for the old Kentucky home; and here he was with a flattering report of the richness of the land to which they were bound to go.

It was a long journey that was before them. Procuring two horses, and loading them with the household stuff and wardrobe of the family, Thomas Lincoln, wife, and two children took up their line of march for the new home in Indiana. At night they

slept on the fragrant pine twigs; and by day they plodded their way toward the Ohio River. They were like true soldiers of fortune, subsisting on the country through which they marched. Here and there it was needful to clear their way through tangled thickets, and now and again they came to streams that must be forded or swum. By all sorts of expedients, the little family contrived to get on from day to day, occupying a week in this transit from one home to another. The nights were cool but pleasant. No rain fell on them in the way, and when, after a week of free and easy life in the woods, they came to the bank of the river and looked over into the promised land, they saw nothing but forest, almost trackless forest, stretching far up and down the stream, silent save for its ripplings and the occasional note of some wandering bird.

CHAPTER II.

THE BOYHOOD OF LINCOLN.

The Lincoln Home in Indiana—Hard Times-The Boy of the Backwoods-Log Cabin Building-Abraham Lincoln's First LetterThe Funeral in the Wilderness-The Boy's First Book.

NDIANA had been admitted into the Union as a

INDI

State, and the tide of immigration setting into the new State was full and far-spreading. But neighbors were not uncomfortably near the Lincolns in their new home. Picking up their property left in charge of one of the scattered settlers by Thomas Lincoln on his first visit, the forlorn family pushed on into the wilderness, where, on a grassy knoll in the heart of the untrodden forest, they fixed upon the site of their future dwelling-place.

A slight hunter's camp was all that could be built to shelter the new settlers during their first winter in the woods of Southern Indiana. This was what was sometimes called a "half-faced camp," open on one side and that the lower. Four uprights, forked at the top, formed the corner-posts, the rear being higher than the front. On these corner-poles were laid the cross-pieces needed to form the edges of the roof, and across these were the sloping rafters, covered with split "shakes," or thin slabs from the trees felled by the hardy backwoodsman and his boy.

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