larger than a small boy, and equally bashful—and while trying to hide himself as well as he could behind his pants, was saluted by his landlord with: "I say, stranger, you've got a mighty slim chance of legs thar." And an English gentleman once told me that, chancing to stop at a pioneer home in Virginia, and bed-time having come, the father of the family cried out to his girls, who had already retired, "Say you, Marg and Miley, lay over thar, and make room for this yere stranger."

These are not random or hyperbolical sketches; just what is herein narrated was the normal mode of life in the backwoods of Kentucky when Abraham Lincoln was reared there, in part. And his residences in Indiana and Illinois in the 20's and 30's were not so greatly in advance, in the matter of refinement. Thomas Lincoln, Dennis and John Hanks, and John D. Johnson were average specimens of men born and reared in the same condition of society in which Lincoln's lot was cast. Their social conditions and mental attainments can be seen, by those curious to know, in the graphic pages of Lamon and Herndon. That their boyhood and young manhood's companion achieved a more brilliant career and a more sublime destiny; is attributable to the finer fibre of the man, and to the more impressive and reverential fact, that the Unseen Power which controls nations and institutions had need of a Leonidas to hold the pass of our Thermopyla-had need of a Moses to lead the children of Africa out of their house of bondage.

The food was corn bread, made from meal, salt and water, bacon, game; semi-occasionally poultry and pork; very pale butter at rare intervals; vegetables not as a rule, but very irregularly in summer. Jeans and linsey afforded the chief staples of clothing; to go barefoot was rather the rule and certainly was not at all uncommon for men and women; home-made moccasins, from the skins of groundhogs and other animals, and coarse brogans constituted the best attire for the feet; and while the stores were resorted

to frequently for head gear it also was not uncommon that coons and opossum skins were improvised as coverings for the head.

Every man and boy was, both from choice and necessity, a hunter; a long, heavy rifle rested upon crotched sticks over the door-frame of every cabin, or was swung over the shoulder of the proprietor whenever he went to election, mill, justice's court or any other journey about his settlement. Neighborhood gatherings were very commonand none were exempted from taking part-house raisings, log-rollings, quilting bees, magistrates' trial days, elections, scrub races and religious awakenings. At these gatherings (except the latter) much of the neighborhood business was transacted; horses were swapped, contests of shooting at a mark were indulged in, local character was discussed, and, most important and inevitable, one or more fist fights crowned the honor of the day.

This was the highest effort of human ambition; they were not conceived, as a rule, in malice: they were simply designed as tests of the highest feats of ambition and manhood; sometimes malice would be engendered during a fight, and sometimes the most cordial amenity-it all depended upon the characteristics of the combatants, their conduct during the contest, the issue of it, and the incidents connected with it. One of Lincoln's best and staunchest friends was Jack Armstrong. whom he whipped in one of these fights; and whose son he defended successfully from a brutal murder as late as 1858.

Major Alexander Sympson, of Hancock County, Illinois, now deceased, informed me that he was just about Lincoln's own age, and that he was raised in the same general neighborhood with him, on Nolins' Creek, in Kentucky. He states that Lincoln himself, and all the other small neighborhood boys, were accustomed to meet at the mill, within a couple of miles or so of Lincoln's residence, and he well recollects of his attire and general appearance. He was the shyest, most reti

cent, most uncouth and awkward-appearing, homeliest, and worse dressed of any in the entire crowd. For some time he was suffered to look on in silence and take no part in the games, local contests or pugilistic encounters incident to these gatherings. But his turn to be ground up in the conventional mill of social routine came at last, and as it had been so long delayed, it was proposed to grind him into impalpable powder, socially, as it were. Sympson saw it all. Lincoln was standing at a huge tree when he was attacked, without either provocation or warning, by a boy larger than himself, and who, metaphorically, wore the belt: with the reserves thick and close at his back; but the very acme of astonishment was experienced by the eagerly expectant crowd, for Lincoln soundly thrashed the first, second and third boy in succession, and then placed his back againt the tree, defied the whole crowd and taunted them with cowardice. But he was disturbed no more, then or thereafter. His prowess and mettle secured him immunity for the future. But he left that country soon afterward.

Education was an exotic in those regions. Lincoln's father could not read or write; his mother could do both, and was regarded as a miracle of learning therefor. Lincoln had a prodigious thirst for education and his father fostered this ambition and in laying plans, the ultima thule of both was that he should learn to cipher clear through the arithmetic. But his ambition was not fulfilled. His sole scholastic education was limited to reading, writing, and ciphering as far as the rule of three: and, in point of fact, he went to school but four months in his life.

When Lincoln was seven years of age he removed to Spencer county, Indiana, and when he was twenty-one years old, he removed to Macon county, Illinois and one year later took up his residence at the little hamlet of New Salem, in Illinois, where he lived until he removed to Springfield in 1837. Although each of these several places of residence was on the frontier, yet a comparative advance was made in civil