his cap a coon-skin; it was only the material for his blouse or shirt that was woven at home. If this costume had some obvious disadvantages, it was not to be despised. So good an authority as Governor Reynolds says of one of its articlesthe linsey-woolsey shirt-" It was an excellent garment. I have never felt so happy and healthy since I put it off.”

These "pretty pinching times," as Abraham Lincoln once described the early days in Indiana, lasted until 1819. The year before Nancy Lincoln had died, and for many months no more forlorn place could be conceived than this pioneer home bereft of its guiding spirit; but finally Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and returned with a new wife-Sally Bush Johnston, a widow with three children, John, Sarah, and Matilda. The new mother came well provided with household furniture, bringing many things unfamiliar to little Abraham—“one fine bureau, one table, one set of chairs, one large clothes-chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bedding, and other articles." She was a woman of energy, thrift, and gentleness, and at once made the cabin home-like and taught the children habits of cleanliness and comfort.

Abraham was ten years old when his new mother came from Kentucky, and he was already an important member of the family. He was remarkably strong for his years, and the work he could do in a day was a decided advantage to Thomas Lincoln. The axe which had been put into his hand to help in making the first clearing, he had never been allowed to drop; indeed, as he says himself, "from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument." Besides, he drove the

team, cut the elm and linn brush with which the stock was often fed, learned to handle the old shovel-plough, to wield the sickle, to thresh the wheat with a flail, to fan and clean it with a sheet, to go to mill and turn the hard-earned grist into flour. In short, he learned all the trades the settler's

boy must know, and so well that when his father did not need him he could hire him to the neighbors. Thomas Lincoln also taught him the rudiments of carpentry and cabinet-making, and kept him busy much of the time as his assistant in his trade. There are houses still standing, in and near Gentryville, on which it is said he worked.

As he grew older he became one of the strongest and most popular "hands" in the vicinity, and much of his time was spent as a "hired boy" on some neighbor's farm. For twenty-five cents a day-paid to his father-he was hostler, ploughman, wood-chopper, and carpenter, besides helping the women with the "chores." For them he was ready to carry water, make the fire, even tend the baby. No wonder that a laborer who never refused to do anything asked of him, who could "strike with a maul heavier blows" and "sink an axe deeper into the wood" than anybody else in the community, and who at the same time was general help for the women, never lacked a job in Gentryville.

Of all the tasks his rude life brought him, none seems to have suited him better than going to the mill. It was, perhaps, as much the leisure enforced by this trip as anything else that attracted him. The machinery was primitive, and each man waited his turn, which sometimes was long in com'ing. A story is told by one of the pioneers of Illinois of going many miles with a grist, and waiting so long for his turn, that when it came, he and his horse had eaten all the corn and he had none to grind. This waiting with other men and boys on like errands gave an opportunity for talk, story-telling, and games, which were Lincoln's delight.

If Abraham Lincoln's life was rough and hard it was not without amusements. At home the rude household was overflowing with life. There were Abraham and his sister, a stepbrother and two stepsisters, and a cousin of Nancy

By permission, from Herndon and Weik's" Life of Abraham Lincoln."

Copyright 1892. by D. Appleton & Co.

FACSIMILE OF THE RECORD OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY

MADE BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN THE FAMILY BIBLE.

From original in possession of C. F. Gunther, Esq., Chicago.

Hanks Lincoln, Dennis (Friend) Hanks, whom misfortune had made an inmate of the Lincoln home-quite enough to plan sports and mischief and keep time from growing dull. Thomas Lincoln and Dennis Hanks were both famous storytellers, and the Lincolns spent many a cozy evening about their cabin fire, repeating the stories they knew.

Of course the boys hunted. Not that Abraham ever became a true sportsman; indeed, he seems to have lacked the genuine sporting instinct. In a curious autobiography, written entirely in the third person, which Lincoln prepared at the request of a friend in 1860, he says of his exploits as a hunter: "A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin; and Abraham with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on any larger game.' This exploit is confirmed by Dennis Hanks, who says: "No doubt about A. Lincoln's killing the turkey. He done it with his father's rifle, made by William Lutes of Bullitt county, Kentucky. I have killed a hundred deer with her myself; turkeys too numerous to mention.”

But there were many other country sports which he enjoyed to the full. He went swimming in the evenings; fished with the other boys in Pigeon creek, wrestled, jumped, and ran races at the noon rests. He was present at every country horse-race and fox-chase. The sports he preferred were those which brought men together; the spelling-school, the husking-bee; the "raising;" and of all these he was the life by his wit, his stories, his good nature, his doggerel verses, his practical jokes, and by a rough kind of politeness-for even in Indiana in those times there was a notion of politeness, and one of Lincoln's school-masters had given "lessons in manners." Lincoln seems to have profited in a degree by them; for Mrs. Crawford, at whose home he worked for