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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 attende1, 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.

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 sermon. 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

family, and proceeded to the tree under which the precious dust of a wife and mother was buried. The congregation, seated upon stumps and logs around the grave, reteived the preacher and the mourning family in a silence broken only by the songs of birds, and the murmur of insects, or the creaking cart of some late comer. Taking his stand at the foot of the grave, Parson Elkin lifted his voice in prayer and sacred song, and then preached a sermon. The occasion, the eager faces around him, and all the sweet influences of the morning, inspired him with an unusual fluency and fervor; and the flickering sunlight, as it glanced through the wind-parted leaves, caught many a tear upon the bronzed cheeks of his auditors, while father and son were overcome by the revival of their great grief. He spoke of the precious Christian woman who had gone with the warm praise which she deserved, and held her up as an example of true womanhood.

Those who knew the tender and reverent spirit of Abraham Lincoln later in life, will not doubt that he returned to his cabin-home deeply impressed by all that he had heard. It was the rounding up for him of the influences of a Christian mother's life and teachings. It recalled her sweet and patient example, her assiduous efforts to inspire him with pure and noble motives, her simple instructions in divine truth, her devoted love for him, and the motherly offices she had rendered him during all his tender years. His character was planted in this Christian mother's life. Its roots were fed by this Christian mother's love; and those who have wondered at the truthfulness and earnestness of his mature character, have only to remember that the tree was true to the soil from which it sprang.

Abraham, at an early day, became a reader. Every book upon which he could lay his hands he read. He became a writer also. The majority of the settlers around him were entirely illiterate, and when it became known that Mr. Lincoln's boy could write, his services were in frequent request by them in sending epistolary messages to their friends. In the composition of these letters his carly habits of putting the thoughts of others as well as his own into language were

formed. The exercise was, indeed, as good as a school to him; for there is no better discipline, for any mind, than that of giving definite expression to thought in language. Much of his subsequent power as a writer and speaker was undoubtedly traceable to this early discipline.

The books which Abraham had the early privilege of reading were the Bible, much of which he could repeat, Æsop's Fables, all of which he could repeat, Pilgrim's Progress, Weems' Life of Washington, and a Life of Henry Clay which his mother had managed to purchase for him. Subsequently he read the Life of Franklin and Ramsay's Life of Washington. In these books, read and re-read, he found meat for his hungry mind. The Holy Bible, Æsop and John Bunyan-could three better books have been chosen for him from the richest library? For those who have witnessed the dissipating effects of many books upon the minds of modern children it is not hard to believe that Abraham's poverty of books was the wealth of his life. These three books did much to perfect that which his mother's teachings had begun, and to form a character which for quaint simplicity, earnestness, truthfulness and purity has never been surpassed among the historic personages of the world. The Life of Washington, while it gave to him a lofty example of patriotism, incidentally conveyed to his mind a general knowledge of American history; and the Life of Henry Clay spoke to him of a living man who had risen to political and professional eminence from circumstances almost as humble as his own. The latter book undoubtedly did much to excite his taste for politics, to kindle his ambition, and to make him a warm admirer and partizan of Henry Clay. Abraham must have been very young when he read Weems' Life of Washington, and we catch a glimpse of his precocity in the thoughts which it excited, as revealed by himself in a speech made to the New Jersey Senate, while on his way to Washington to assume the duties of the Presidency. Alluding to his early reading of this book, he says: “I remember all the accounts there given of the battle fields and struggles for the liberties of the country, and none fixed

themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton, New Jersey. * *.* I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for." Even at this age, he was not only an interested reader of the story, but a student of motives.

Ramsay's Life of Washington was borrowed from his teacher, Andrew Crawford, and an anecdote connected with it illustrates Abraham's conscientiousness and characteristic honesty. The borrowed book was left unguardedly in an open window. A shower coming on, it was wet and nearly ruined. Abraham carried it to Mr. Crawford in great grief and alarm, and, after explaining the accident, offered to pay for the book in labor. Mr. Crawford accepted the proposal, and the lad "pulled fodder" three days to pay, not for the damages, but for the book itself, which thus became one of his own literary treasures.

In the autumn or early winter of 1819, somewhat more than a year after the death of Mrs. Lincoln, Abraham passed into the care of a step-mother. His father married and brought to his home in Indiana, Mrs. Sally Johnston, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, undoubtedly one of his old acquaintances. She brought with her three children, the fruit of her previous marriage; but she faithfully fulfilled her assumed maternal duties to Thomas Lincoln's children. The two families grew up in harmony together, and the many kind offices which she performed for Abraham were gratefully returned then and in after years by him. She still survives, having seen her young charge rise to be her own ruler, and the ruler of the nation, and to fall amid expressions of grief from the whole civilized world.

As Abraham grew up, he became increasingly helpful in all the work of the farm, often going out to labor by the day for hire. Abundant evidence exists that he was regarded by the neighbors as being remarkable, in many respects, above the lads of his own age, with whom he associated. In physical strength and sundry athletic feats, he was the master of them all. Never quarrelsome or disposed to make an unpleasant show

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