There are no real tales of sentimental experiences in these years, but a direction in which he sometimes dreamed is painted in an interview with a Springfield editor. It was a rainy day, and Lincoln, sitting with his feet on the window-sill, his eyes on the street, watching the rain, suddenly looked up and said:

“Did you ever write out a story in your mind? I did when I was a little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first I ever had heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a great deal, and one day when I was sitting out in the sun by the house I wrote out a story in my mind. I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me. I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse, and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was the one we had left a few hours before, and we went in. The next night we tried again, and the same thing happened - the horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded that we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had per

I always

suaded her father to give her to me. meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once; but I concluded it was not much of a story. But I think that was the beginning of love with me."

CHAPTER II

EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN LIFE

WHEN Lincoln was nearly twenty-one years of age, his father, discouraged by another epidemic of the milk-sick, found occasion to move. He sold most of what belonged to the various branches of his family, aggregating thirteen persons, and put the rest into one wagon drawn by four oxen, who started off with their load in March, 1830. The driver was Abraham, but he was not content with one occupation. He had saved over $30, and before leaving Gentryville he invested it all in articles which might be of use to the inhabitants of villages through which they were to pass. "A set of knives and forks was the largest item entered on the bill," says Captain Jones, the Gentryville grocer; "the other items were needles, pins, thread, buttons, and other little domestic necessities. When the Lincolns reached their new home, near Decatur, Illinois, Abraham wrote back to my father, stating that he had doubled his money on his purchases by selling them along Unfortunately we did not keep that

the road.

letter, not thinking how highly we would have prized it years afterward."

After two weeks of this kind of travel through the prairies and scattered villages, the thirteen relatives landed at a point about ten miles west of Decatur, Macon County, Illinois, a spot selected by John Hanks, a relative who already lived there. It was "just before the winter of the deep snow,' which is accepted as a dividing line that makes the Lincolns pioneers. They speedily built a log cabin, in which they resided when that first winter in their new home brought them snow three feet deep, followed by rain which froze, after which the mercury remained at twelve below zero for two weeks. It was at Decatur that Lincoln made the first oratorical test of which anything is known. A man came to town and made a speech. John Hanks thereupon remarked that Abe could beat it." John turned down a box, Lincoln mounted it, and did what John promised. The subject was the navigation of the Sangamon River.

That river saw the beginning of the first eventful trip of Abraham Lincoln's life. After spending the Illinois winter in odd jobs, largely railsplitting, for his father's benefit, the legal period for his emancipation arrived. After the separation Tom moved at least three times, and although he hereafter counts for little, he will

appear later briefly in Abraham's life. The young man's first chance grew out of the fact that Denton Offut, a business man, asked John Hanks to take a boat-load of provisions and stock to New Orleans. John engaged Lincoln and his stepbrother, John Johnson, and Offut was to pay fifty cents a day besides a sum of $60. Lincoln and Hanks started in a canoe down the Sangamon River in March, 1831, and landed at what is now Jamestown, five miles east of Springfield, where they were joined by Johnson, and all three went to Springfield to see Offut. That enterprising person had not prepared a boat, so the three young men constructed it themselves, taking“ Congress land" timber and using the machinery of a neighboring mill. In four weeks it was ready, and the venturesome journey was begun. It was full of novelty, full of instruction, fun, and variety. A passing magician offered to cook eggs in Lincoln's hat. The owner hesitated, but finally lent it, and explained that his delay "was out of respect for the eggs, not for my hat." When they reached New Salem, April 19, the boat stranded on Rutledge's mill-dam, and hung helplessly over it for a day and a night. It was the ingenious Lincoln who finally solved the difficulty. He had the goods removed to another boat, and after their craft was empty he bored a hole in the end which projected over the