BY ISAAC N. ARNOLD.

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His grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, and his father, Thomas, were born in Rockingham County, Virginia.

About 1781, while his father was still a lad, his grandfather's family emigrated to Kentucky, and was a contemporary with Daniel Boone, the celebrated Indian fighter and early hero of that State. This, a then wild and

wooded territory, was the scene of those fierce and desperate conflicts between the settlers and the Indians which gave it the name of "The dark and bloody ground."

When Thomas Lincoln, the father of the President, was six years old, his father (Abraham, the grandfather of the President) was shot and instantly killed by an Indian. The boy and his father were at work in the cornfield, near their log-cabin home. Mordecai, the elder brother of the lad, at work not far away, witnessed the attack. He saw his father fall, and ran to the cabin, seized his ready-loaded rifle and springing to the loop-hole cut through the logs, he saw the Indian, who had seized the boy, carrying him away. Raising his rifle and aiming at a silver medal, conspicuous on the breast of the Indian, he instantly fired. The Indian fell, and the lad, springing to his feet, ran to the open arms of his mother, at the cabin door. Amidst such scenes, the Lincoln family naturally produced rude, rough, hardy, and fearless men, familiar with wood-craft; men who could meet the extremes of exposure and fatigue, who knew how to find food and shelter in the forest; men of great powers of endurance-brave and self-reliant, true and faithful to their friends and dangerous to their enemies. Men with

minds to conceive and hands to execute bold enterprises.

It is a curious fact that the grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, is noted on the surveys of Daniel Boone as having purchased of the Government five hundred acres of land. Thomas Lincoln, the father, was also the purchaser of government land, and President Lincoln left, as a part of his estate, a quarter-section (one hundred and sixty acres), which he had received from the United States for services rendered in early life as a volunteer soldier, in the Black-Hawk Indian war. Thus for three generations the Lincoln family were land-owners directly from the Gov

ernment.

Such was the lineage and family from which President Lincoln sprung. Such was the environment in which his character was developed.

He was born in a log-cabin, in Kentucky, on the 12th of February, 1809.

It will aid you in picturing to yourself this young man and his surroundings, to know that, from boyhood to the age of twenty-one, in winter his head was protected from the cold by a cap made of the skin of the coon, fox, or prairie-wolf, and that he often wore the buckskin breeches and hunting-shirt of the pioneer.

He grew up to be a man of majestic stature and Herculean strength. Had he appeared in England or Normandy, some centuries ago, he would have been the founder of some great baronial family, possibly of a royal dynasty. He could have wielded, with ease, the two-handed sword of Guy, the great Earl of Warwick, or the battle-axe of Richard of the Lion-heart.

BY ISAAC N. ARNOLD.

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HIS EDUCATION AND TRAINING.

The world is naturally interested in knowing what was the education and training which fitted Lincoln for the great work which he accomplished. On the extreme frontier, the means of book-learning was very limited. The common free schools, which now closely follow the heels of the pioneer and organized civil government, and prevail all over the United States, had not then reached the Far West. An itinerant school-teacher wandered occasionally into a settlement, opened a private school for a few months, and, at such, Lincoln attended at different times, in all about twelve months. His mother, who was a woman of practical good sense, of strong physical organization, of deep religious feeling, gentle and selfreliant, taught him to read and write.

Although she died when he was only nine years old, she had already laid deep the foundations of his excellence. Perfect truthfulness and integrity, love of justice, self-control, reverence for God, these constituted the solid basis of his character. These were all implanted and carefully cultivated by his mother, and he always spoke of her with the deepest respect and the most tender affection. “All that I am, or hope to be," said he, when President, "I owe to my sainted mother."

He early manifested the most eager desire to learn, but there were no libraries, and few books in the back settlements in which he lived. Among the stray volumes which he found in the possession of the illiterate families by which he was surrounded, were Æsop's Fables, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a life of Washington, the poems

of Burns, and the Bible. To these his reading was confined, and he read them over and over again, until they became as familiar almost as the alphabet. His memory was marvelous, and I never yet met the man more familiar with the Bible than Abraham Lincoln. This was apparent in after life, both from his conversation and writings, scarcely a speech or state paper of his in which illustrations and illusions from the Bible cannot be found.

While a young man, he made for himself, of coarse paper, a scrap-book, into which he copied everything which particularly pleased him. He found an old English grammar, which he studied by himself; and he formed, from his constant study of the Bible, that simple, plain, clear Anglo-Saxon style, so effective with the people. He illustrated the maxim that it is better to know thoroughly a few good books than to skim over many. When fifteen years old, he began (with a view of improving himself) to write on various subjects and to practice in making political and other speeches. These he made so amusing and attractive that his father had to forbid his making them in working-hours, for, said he, "when Abe begins to speak, all the hands flock to hear him." His memory was so retentive that he could repeat, verbatim, the sermons and political speeches which he heard.

While his days were spent in hard manual labor, and his evenings in study, he grew up strong in body, healthful in mind, with no bad habits; no stain of intemperance, profanity or vice of any kind. He used neither tobacco nor intoxicating drinks, and, thus living, he grew to be six feet four inches high, and a giant in strength. In all

BY ISAAC N. ARNOLD.

athletic sports he had no equal.

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I have heard an old

comrade say, "he could strike the hardest blow with the woodman's axe, and the maul of the rail-splitter, jump higher, run faster than any of his fellows, and there were none, far or near, who could lay him on his back." Kind and cordial, he early developed so much wit and humor, such a capacity for narrative and story-telling, that he was everywhere a most welcome guest.

A LAND SURVEYOR.

Like Washington, he became, in early life, a good practical surveyor, and I have in my library the identical book from which, at eighteen years of age, he studied the art of surveying. By his skill and accuracy, and by the neatness of his work, he was sought after by the settlers, to survey and fix the boundaries of their farms, and in this way, in part, he earned a support while he studied law. In 1837, self-taught, he was admitted and licensed, by the Supreme Court of Illinois, to practice law.

A LAWYER.

It is difficult for me to describe, and, perhaps, more difficult for you to conceive the contrast when Lincoln began to practice law, between the forms of the administration of justice in Westminster Hall, and in the rude log court-houses of Illinois. I recall to-day what was said a few years ago by an Illinois friend, when we visited, for the first time, Westminster Abbey, and as we passed into Westminster Hall. "This," he exclaimed, “this is the