strong stakes driven into the earth, with cross-pieces to support the bedding. There were seats and a table. There was a loft overhead, to be reached by climbing, with the aid of pegs driven into the wall-logs.

The new home was about forty yards distant from the halffaced camp, and the Lincoln family entered it in the autumn of the year 1817. At least it was their own, and they were now more nearly landholders than they had ever been in Kentucky. They had actually raised a crop upon their new farm that year, and the land had proved its quality. It was a spot whereon industry might expect to win abundance, but there was never soil so fertile that it could yield prosperity as a free gift.

Many settlers came to the Pigeon Creek region during that year, although none seem to have settled very near to the Lincoln clearing. There may even have been play-fellows for little Nancy and Abe, by going far enough to find them.

Over in Kentucky, the Sparrow family had not prospered. They had been near neighbors on Nolin's Creek, and they had done as much for their nephew Dennis Hanks, as for their niece Nancy. They now received a cordial invitation to come over to Indiana, bringing Dennis with them, and occupy the half-faced camp. They came, and they went into it as the Lincolns went out, and there was now to be less of loneliness in that clearing.

The then existing system of obtaining lands from the United States government, allowed actual sellers ample time for making the moderate payments required of them. On the 15th of October, 1817, Thomas Lincoln made a formal landoffice entry of his claim to the quarter section, or one hundred and sixty acres of land, upon which he had begun his clearing. This entitled him to unmolested occupation of his forest-farm, free of rent, but the greater part of it continued to be forest, season after season, until at last, June 6th, 1827, nearly two years after the original entry, he surrendered one half of it to

the government and completed his payment upon the eighty acres which contained his clearing and his cabin.

The winter of 1817-18 went by in the ordinary, eventless way of the backwoods. Some chopping was done, but no important improvement was made upon either the log cabin or the hut which now sheltered the Sparrows and Dennis Hanks, except when the latter climbed into the loft at night to sleep on a bag of corn husks with his cousin Abe. It was not a severe winter. In fact, the old settlers of Indiana have borne a uniform testimony that its winter climate was much milder before the forests were cleared away than it has been since the winds from across the great lakes of the north were permitted to sweep the surface of the earth and howl around the houses. Game was so plentiful that a hunter could hardly fail of bringing home a deer on any good hunting day. There was more than fresh meat to be obtained in this way, since "buckskin" took the place of cloth to a great extent in the raiment of both sexes. There were wild turkeys and smaller feathered game to be trapped rather than hunted. Rabbits and raccoons were only too numerous for the good of present and future corn crops, but there was a good market for the skins of the latter, and they could be traded for grocery supplies at Gentryville or at the river" landing," only sixteen miles away.

No great account could be taken of long distances by the children of such a settlement. Abe and Nancy had been accustomed, at an earlier age, in Kentucky, to go and come four miles in attending the school upon the Friends' Farm, and they had now learned how to pick their own way through the pathless woods. There was as yet, however, no school-house among the widely scattered cabins of that young neighborhood, and if they learned anything new or kept what they had already acquired, their mother was their only teacher. As for anything like danger, other than that of being lost in the woods, it had disappeared with the vanishing red men. There were not many "painters" or cougars, and neither these nor

the well-fed wolves were likely to assail human beings in the daytime, while the habits of the bears were, as a rule, eminently pacific.

Spring came again, and another crop was put in, with somewhat more of cleared land to put it on. The road to prosperity seemed to have opened; but there was a deadly enemy arriving. A region teeming with vegetable growth and carpeted with its decay, could not but be miasmatic. Letting in the sun and turning up the soil set free poisonous exhalations, which exhibited their effect in various forms of malarial fever. One of these, a strange, baffling, and peculiarly fatal disorder, known to the settlers as "the milk sick," began to make its appearance as an epidemic in the summer of the year 1818. Its ravages were frightful, and there were no physicians to study its nature or provide proper remedies. A disorder tak ing the same name continued to perplex western medical men during half a century, surviving controversies in which scientific disputants even denied its existence. It is described as a slow, painful, wasting fever, attacking animals as well as men and women, and suggesting a reference to the fact that all drank water from standing pools which became more or less putrid in hot weather.

The corn grew rank and tall, but the midsummer days darkened, for there was sickness in almost every house, and even the few cattle and the horses were perishing. There was little help to be had, and death was the relief most frequently obtained. In the Lincoln settlement, Thomas and Betty Sparrow were the first to be smitten and they were removed from the pole-shelter to the cabin for better nursing. It was by no means well adapted for a hospital, but it became one, for Mrs. Lincoln herself soon sickened. Her husband and the children were the only nurses, and there was no physician within twenty miles. There was at this time also a weird and pressing demand upon the time of Thomas Lincoln, for he was the only man in all that region with skill and tools to

whip-saw logs into rough boards and make coffins for the many victims of the "milk-sick."

The sufferers in his own home lingered on through the long, hot weeks of August and September. About the first of October both Thomas and Betsy Sparrow died, and they were buried on a knoll in the forest half a mile northeast of the cabin. On the 5th of October Mrs. Nancy Lincoln died and was laid beside them. A number of neighbors, perhaps a score in all, came to attend the simple funeral services, but there was no minister. A few months later, a traveling preacher, named David Elkins, preached a funeral sermon at the urgent request, it is related, of little Abraham.

During many a long year that followed there was no stone to mark the last resting-place of the poor woman whose life formed so important a link in the processes of a great history. At this day it is surrounded by a neat iron railing, inclosing a monument bearing the following inscription:

NANCY HANKS LINCOLN.

MOTHER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Died October 5th, 1818. Aged 35 years.

Erected by a Friend of her Martyred Son, 1879.

This tribute to her memory was given by Mr. P. E. Stude backer, of South Bend, Indiana, joined by a few of his neighbors as contributors.

Abraham Lincoln was now a very ignorant, neglected, somewhat overgrown backwoods boy of eleven, and there is a distinct waymark of character in his affection for his mother, and the persistence with which he secured a proper religious testimony of respect for her memory. Still, he was only a boy, and he had that before him which might well incline him to turn his mind away from all these years of his history.

The log-cabin was now no longer a hospital, for the epidemic