The place chosen for their new home was the Sangamon country in central Illinois. It was at that day a country of great renown in the West, the name meaning "The land where there is plenty to eat." One of the family-John Hanks, a cousin of Abraham's mother-was already there, and the inviting reports he had sent to Indiana were no doubt what led the Lincolns to decide on Illinois as their future home. Gentryville saw young Lincoln depart with genuine regret, and his friends gave him a score of rude proofs that he would not be forgotten. After he was gone, one of these friends planted a cedar tree in his memory. It still marks the site of the Lincoln home-the first monument erected to the memory of a man to whom the world will never cease to raise monuments.

The spot on the hill overlooking Buckthorne valley, where the Lincolns said good-by to their old home and to the home of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, to the grave of the mother and wife, to all their neighbors and friends, is still pointed out. Buckthorne valley held many recollections dear to them all, but to no one of the company was the place dearer than to Abraham. It is certain that he felt the parting keenly, and that he never forgot his years in the Hoosier State. One of the most touching experiences he relates in all his published letters is his emotion at visiting his old Indiana home fourteen years after he had left it. So strongly was he moved by the scenes of his first conscious sorrows, efforts, joys, ambitions, that he put into verse the feelings they awakened.

While he never attempted to conceal the poverty and hardship of these days, and would speak humorously of the "pretty pinching times" he experienced, he never regarded his life at this time as mean or pitiable. Frequently he talked to his friends in later days of his boyhood, and always with apparent pleasure. "Mr. Lincoln told this story (of his youth)," says Leonard Swett, "as the story of a happy child

hood. There was nothing sad or pinched, and nothing of want, and no allusion to want in any part of it. His own description of his youth was that of a happy, joyous boyhood. It was told with mirth and glee, and illustrated by pointed anecdotes, often interrupted by his jocund laugh.'

And he was right. There was nothing ignoble or mean in this Indiana pioneer life. It was rude, but only with the rudeness which the ambitious are willing to endure in order to push on to a better condition than they otherwise could know. These people did not accept their hardships apathetically. They did not regard them as permanent. They were only the temporary deprivations necessary in order to accomplish what they had come into the country to do. For this reason they endured hopefully all that was hard. It is worth notice, too, that there was nothing belittling in their life; there was no pauperism, no shirking. Each family provided for its own simple wants, and had the conscious dignity which comes from being equal to a situation. If their lives lacked culture and refinement, they were rich in independence and self-reliance.

The company which emigrated to Illinois included the family of Thomas Lincoln and those of Dennis Hanks and Levi Hall, married to Lincoln's stepsisters-thirteen persons in all. They sold land, cattle and grain, and much of their household goods, and were ready in March of 1830 for their journey. All the possessions which the three families had to take with them were packed into big wagonsto which oxen were attached, and the caravan was ready. The weather was still cold, the streams were swollen, and the roads were muddy; but the party started out bravely. Inured to hardships, alive to all the new sights on their route, every day brought them amusement and adventures, and especially to young Lincoln the journey must have been of keen interest,

He drove one of the teams, he tells us, and, according to a story current in Gentryville, he succeeded in doing a fair peddler's business on the route. Captain William Jones, in whose father's store Lincoln had spent so many hours in discussion and in story-telling, and for whom he had worked the last winter he was in Indiana, says that before leaving the State Abraham invested all his money, some thirty-odd dollars, in notions. Though all the country through which they expected to pass was but sparsely settled, he believed he could dispose of them. "A set of knives and forks was the largest item entered on the bill," says Captain Jones; "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 the road. Unfortunately we did not keep that letter, not thinking how highly we would have prized it in years afterwards."

The pioneers were a fortnight on their journey. All we know of the route they took is from a few chance remarks of Lincoln's to his friends to the effect that they passed through Vincennes, where he saw a printing-press for the first time, and through Palestine, where he saw a juggler performing sleight-of-hand tricks. They reached Macon County, their new home, from the south. Mr. H. C. Whitney says that once in Decatur, when he and Lincoln were passing the courthouse together, "Lincoln walked out a few feet in front, and, after shifting his position two or three times, said, as he looked up at the building, partly to himself and partly to me: 'Here is the exact spot where I stood by our wagon when we moved from Indiana, twenty-six years ago; this isn't six feet from the exact spot.' He then told me he had frequently thereafter tried to locate the reute by which they