The wife had not many utensils for house-keeping-probably a Dutch-oven, frying-pan, a few tin dishes, wooden plates, and a bucket. None of his ancestors could have ever lived in a home more destitute of needed articles or one more cheerless. Perchance the cabin of his father on the Yadkin or that at Bear-grass Fort may have been but little better; but the home of Mordecai, the iron-founder of Scituate, and that of Mordecai, the land proprietor of Freehold and Amity, were palaces in comparison with this habitation. Shall we conclude that inability to acquire wealth or that intellectual decadence are the natural outcome of the adverse circumstances of life on the picket line of civilization? It is not probable that the grandfather or father of Thomas Lincoln had much opportunity to attend school. Theirs was a limited education. The owner of the home on Nolin's Creek did not know the letters of the alphabet until taught them by his devoted wife. How shall we account for the gradual waning of intellectual endowment in the generations between the active and energetic "gentleman," the landed proprietor of Freehold, and the unambitious carpenter of Hodgensville? Though the roots of the husband's ancestral tree reached down to Puritan England, and, on the part of the wife, to the days when a King of Britain confronted imperial Rome, nature gave no intimation, through hereditary descent, of the coming of one who should be a redeemer to millions of his fellow-men. The evolution had been downward rather than upward. No prophetic voice whispered of coming greatness; no sign appeared; no star rested above the cheerless cabin by Rock Spring, in which, February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln, son of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was born.

[From a photograph taken by the author, Nolin's Creek, Ky., October, 1891.]

To keep out the snow and rain possibly the skin of a bear may have hung across the doorway of the cabin, or that of a deer over the opening left for a window; but the wintry winds had free access through the unplastered crevices between the logs. Here the mother folds in her

arms her infant son. Here she attends to her household duties-living the routine of drudgery, baking the corn-bread, frying the bacon, dressing the skins of the deer brought down by her husband's rifle, making his clothing, carding cotton and wool to obtain a dress for herself and garments for her children.

It was not a difficult matter for Thomas Lincoln to obtain meat for his family, as the woods abounded with deer and wild turkeys. It was more of a task to obtain corn. When obtained, it must be taken to Mr. Hodgen's mill for grinding. What other home surpasses this in exhibition of pathetic scenes? Another child came, to live only a few hours. Nancy Hanks Lincoln-queenly in personal appearance, imperial in her aspirations-attends to her wifely duties. The day begins and ends with religious service. The cultured wife reads the Bible to the uncultured husband. His lips utter the prayer. The Puritan instinct in the husband has come down through the successive generations from the Hingham straw-thatched cottage in old England, and in the wife from the Friends' home on the white hills of Wales. In the gloaming, when work for the day is done, the mother tells the stories of Abraham, Moses, David, and the Child of Nazareth. The horizon of her life was wider than the walls of her home. That her kind-hearted husband might be more than he was to her, himself, and his fellow-men, she taught him the alphabet; but he never was able to construct sentences. She showed him how to write his name, but his proficiency with the pen ended with that attainment. The iron which had given vigor to his ancestors seems to have been wanting in his blood. Little did this mother know how deeply her lessons of truth and virtue went down into the heart of her listening son; how in the fulness of time the germs would put forth their tender shoots; how her own spirit would reappear in his, and the beauty of her soul glorify his life.

She had few opportunities to gratify her longings or enlarge her sphere of usefulness. Occasionally a preacher came to the log meetinghouse at Little Mound to hold services on Sunday. Like her own home, it had no floor. Logs split in halves served for seats. Public spirit in Hodgensville had erected the building, but had not provided glass for the windows. To this meeting-house, located three miles from the Lincoln home, settlers came from far and near-parents and children, on foot or on horseback. It was not only a place for religious service, but the news exchange, where, before and after the sermon, they could hear what was going on in the community and in the world outside of Nolin's Creek. At Little Mound young men could look into the faces of the

maidens, thinking possibly quite as much of their charming countenances as of the heads of the preacher's sermon.

Abraham Lincoln, five years old, was not unmindful of what he saw and heard in Little Mound meeting - house, for usually, after reaching home, he mounted a stool and preached a sermon of his own, shouting in imitation of the minister, and pounding the table with his little fist. He especially liked the Rev. David Elkin. The preacher may have seen something in Thomas Lincoln's boy that attracted his particular attention. It may have been the purity, earnestness, and sadness of the mother's countenance reproduced in the face of the son; perchance the boy asked him questions when he stepped down from the pulpit to shake hands with the father and mother. Whatever the mutual attraction may have been, David Elkin and Abraham Lincoln became fast friends.

It is plain that the settlers of Hodgensville had no very exalted ideas concerning the education of their children. No school-house had been provided when Zachariah Riney proposed to open a school. He was a Roman Catholic priest, who travelled through the settlements teach ing a few weeks in a place. The people were too poor to pay him much money, nor was it much that he could teach. The children of Hodgensville and along Nolin's Creek, those living at Little Mound, boys and girls verging upon manhood and womanhood, flocked to the cabin which served for a school-house. The teacher had only a spelling-book containing easy lessons for reading. Quite likely the young men were somewhat chagrined when Abraham Lincoln, five years old, marched to the head of the class. His mother had been his teacher.

1814.

Thomas Lincoln made no headway in paying for his farm. He tried to better his fortune by bargaining for 200 acres of land on Knob Creek, seven miles from Nolin's. He built a cabin, but it was little better than the one he abandoned. (') Another teacher cameGeorge Hazel-who, like Riney, had only a spelling-book. When the most advanced pupils finished it, he started them once more in words of one syllable. (2) No other book was studied. He did not teach writing.

We have seen Thomas Lincoln's oldest brother inheriting all the property of their father's estate. The law of entail was no longer in force, but the titles of land which had been granted by Virginia to individuals before Kentucky became a State were not always clear. Settlers, after building their houses and improving the land, frequently found they were not the legal owners of the property. Under such a condition of affairs people were moving to Indiana, where they could buy land for $2 an acre, and obtain an unclouded title from the United States. Slavery