of the people with whom Lincoln had been brought up. They all remembered something of him. It is curious to note that all of these people tell of his doing something different from what other boys did, something sufficiently superior to have made a keen impression upon them. In almost every case each person had his own special reason for admiring Lincoln. A facility in making rhymes and writing essays was the admiration of many, who considered it the more remarkable because "essays and poetry were not taught in school," and "Abe took it up on his own account."

Many others were struck by the clever application he made of this gift for expression. At one period he was employed as a "hand" by a farmer who treated him unfairly. Lincoln took a revenge unheard of in Gentryville. He wrote doggerel rhymes about his employer's nose-a long and crooked feature about which the owner was very sensitive. The wit he showed in taking revenge for a social slight by a satire on the Grigsbys, who had failed to invite him to a wedding, made a lasting impression in Gentryville. That he should write so well as to be able to humiliate his enemies more deeply than if he had resorted to the method of taking revenge current in the country, and thrashed them, seemed to his friends a mark of surprising superiority.

His schoolmates all remembered his spelling. He stood at the head of his class invariably and at the spelling-matches in which the young people of the neighborhood passed many an evening the one who first began "choosing sides" always chose "Abe Lincoln." So often did he spell the school down that finally, tradition says, he was no longer allowed to take part in the matches.

Very many of his old neighbors recalled his reading habits and how well stored his mind was with information. His explanations of natural phenomena were so unfamiliar to his companions that he sometimes was jeered at for them,

though as a rule his listeners were sympathetic, taking a certain pride in the fact that one of their number knew as much as Lincoln did. "He was better read than the world knows or is likely to know exactly," said one old acquaintance. "He often and often commented or talked to me about what he had read-seemed to read it out of the book as he went along-did so with others. He was the learned boy among us unlearned folks. He took great pains to explain; could do it so simply. He was diffident, then, too."

One man was impressed by the character of the sentences Lincoln had given him for a copybook. "It was considered at

Abraham Livestra
his hand and pine.
he avi'll be good bust
god knows Where

FACSIMILE OF LINES FROM LINCOLN'S COPY BOOK.

that time," said he, "that Abe was the best penman in the neighborhood. One day, while he was on a visit at my mother's, I asked him to write some copies for me. He very willingly consented. He wrote several of them, but one of them I have never forgotten, although a boy at that time. It was this:

""Good boys who to their books apply
Will all be great men by and by."

To save'

His wonderful memory was recalled by many. that which he found to his liking in the books he borrowed Lincoln committed much to memory. He knew many long poems, and most of the selections in the "Kentucky Precep

tor." By the time he was twenty-one, in fact, his mind was well stored with verse and prose.

All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clear

ness in argument. "When he appeared in company," says Nat Grigsby, "the boys would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was figurative in his speech, talks, and conversation. He argued much from analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories, maxims, tales, and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and near us, that we might instantly see the force and bearing of what he said." This ability to explain clearly and to illustrate by simple figures of speech must be counted as the great mental acquirement of Lincoln's boyhood. It was a power which he gained by hard labor. Years later he related his experience to an acquaintance who had been surprised by the lucidity and simplicity of his speeches and who had asked where he was educated.

"I never went to school more than six months in my life," he said, "but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.

"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over; until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have

bounded it north and bounded it south, and bounded it east and bounded it west."

Mr. Herndon in his interviewing in Indiana found that everywhere Lincoln was remembered as kind and helpful. The man or woman in trouble never failed to receive all the aid he could give him. Even a worthless drunkard of the village called him friend, as well he might, Lincoln having gathered him up one night from the roadside where he lay freezing and carried him on his back a long distance to a shelter and a fire. The thoughtless cruelty to animals so common among country children revolted the boy. He wrote essays on "cruelty to animals," harangued his playmates, protested whenever he saw any wanton abuse of a dumb creature. This gentleness made a lasting impression on his mates, coupled as it was with the physical strength and courage to enforce his doctrines. Stories of his good heart and helpful life might be multiplied but they are summed up in what his stepmother said of the boy:

"Abe was a good boy, and I can say what scarcely one woman- a mother-can say in a thousand: Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life. His mind and mine— what little I had-seemed to run together. He was here after he was elected president. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw, or expect to see."

CHAPTER IV

THE LINCOLNS LEAVE INDIANA―THE JOURNEY TO ILLINOIS -ABRAHAM LINCOLN STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF

IN THE spring of 1830 when Abraham Lincoln was twenty-one years old, his father, Thomas Lincoln, decided to leave Indiana. The reason Dennis Hanks gives for this removal was a disease called the "milk-sick." Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and several of their relatives who had followed them from Kentucky had died of it. The cattle had been carried off by it. Neither brute nor human life seemed to be safe. As Dennis Hanks says: "This was reason enough (ain't it) for leaving?" Any one who has traveled through the portions of Spencer County in which the Lincolns settled will respect Thomas Lincoln for his energy in moving. When covered with timber, as the land was when he chose his farm, it no doubt promised well; but fourteen years of hard labor showed him that the soil was niggardly and the future of the country unpromising. To-day, sixty-five years since the Lincolns left Spencer County, the country remains as it was then, dull, commonplace, unfruitful. The towns show no signs of energy or prosperity. There are no leading streets or buildings; no man's house is better than his neighbor's, and every man's house is ordinary. For a long distance on each side of Gentryville as one passes by rail, no superior farm is to be seen, no prosperous farm or manufactory. It is a dead monotonous country, where no possibilities of quick wealth have been discovered, and which only centuries of tilling and fertilizing can make prosperous.