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

spared its remaining inmates, but the half-faced camp was empty. Dennis Hanks came of course to live with his cousins. It was well that there was so little housekeeping to be done, since it was all upon the small hands of a girl not yet thirteen, and two younger boys, while Thomas Lincoln gave himself, as formerly, to chopping or to hunting, or to any other occupation which did not include making improvements of any kind upon his house or its furniture. It must have been a dismal winter, full of such experiences as might deepen the shadow which was even then making its appearance upon the face of little Abraham. The months of cold weather wore away, and spring came again, and then summer, but they brought no change in the dull, half-savage routine of logcabin life to which the three motherless children appeared to be condemned.

The year which followed the death of Mrs. Nancy Lincoln was as unmarked as was the grave upon which the grass grew above her remains. As it closed, however, Thomas Lincoln himself began to dread the prospect of another lonely, womanless winter. It might not be thought easy for such a man to obtain a second wife, but he believed he had one chance and he determined to make an effort. While still a comparatively young man, before he studied the carpenter's trade or courted Nancy Hanks, he had been wisely rejected by Miss Sarah Bush, afterwards Mrs. Johnston. He knew that she still resided at Elizabethtown, but had now been several years a widow. She had three children and she was poor, although she had continued to maintain an exceptionally high character. He had now much more to offer her than when, without property or even a trade, he had presumed to admire her, for he had become a land-owner, an independent Indiana farmer, with a house ready to receive her. His plan was well matured, and about the first week of November, 1819, the three children had their windowless, doorless, floorless home all to themselves, for Thomas Lincoln was in Kentucky, trying to induce Mrs. Sally

Bush Johnston to disregard the advice of her friends and marry him. It surely was not possible for him to have gone upon a more important errand, whatever may have been his motives or his methods. If some of her friends were opposed to him, it is also related that his own kith and kin came to his assistance, and used all their influence on his behalf. It is not understood, however, that any of them had visited him in Indiana, or knew more of the character of his estate there than they had learned from his own description-such a description as he undoubtedly gave to the widow Johnston.

As for Abe and Nancy Lincoln and Dennis Hanks, left to keep house altogether by themselves, they might well endure a little more for a season, considering what a blessing was in store for them, in case of the father's success. Perhaps there was really little more to endure than usual, considering the fact that food and fuel were all they were accustomed to, but the dreary year of orphanage drew to its close in utter desolation, and the first snows of winter came to a hut which contained a picture never to be forgotten by the people, rich or poor, high or low, of this nation, or of any other to whom it may be presented. There is no other figure in merely human history which points a deeper, more hopeful teaching than does that of the barefooted, grimy, poor-white boy, crouching in midwinter on the mud floor, before the rude fireplace of that squalid hovel.