Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 1/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
YOUTH
On the Kentucky shore, below Louisville, in the midst of Nature's unkempt, umbrageous, and solemn solitudes, there debouches into the Ohio an affluent whose pellucid waters gave no token of the broken hopes, withered ambitions, blasted reputations, and shattered political careers which its name suggests to the American ear. For this is the renowned Salt River of our political mythology, the stream to whose headwaters are annually consigned the defeated aspirants for elective office, and which is more melancholy than the classic Styx in that every political ghost that journeys upon it to oblivion must serve as his own Charon.
It was on the "rolling fork" of Salt River that Thomas Lincoln, in the fall of 1816, embarked in quest of a new home; and he pursued that stream through its various sinuosities until it joined Salt River proper. This stream, however, had not yet acquired its baleful reputation, and did not have to live up to a bad character. So Thomas Lincoln safely steered himself and cargo down its course to the great Ohio. Perversely enough, this river belied the favorable name by which the early French voyageurs had christened it, "La Belle Rivière." Coming out on its turbid tide, Lincoln's boat foundered, and the bulk of his liquid fortune found a watery grave. He rescued a portion of it, however, with much exertion, and, getting afloat again with his cargo of whiskey, succeeded in navigating the Ohio River to a point in Indiana called Thompson's Ferry. Here he left his goods at a cabin, and started through the trackless forest on foot, in quest of a site wherecn to found his new home. Sixteen miles distant, he came to a place which suited his fancy, although it is not unlikely that the setting sun and the cravings of hunger, warning him to seek a shelter, had some bearing upon his choice of a location.
The "numbers" of his claim were Southwest quarter of Section Thirty-two, Town Four South, Range Five West. The place thus selected was near to both Big and Little Pigeon Creek, in what was then Perry, but thereafter became Spencer County. Having "notched" the trees upon the boundaries of his claim, and made the improvement required by "squatter" law, viz.: to pile up brush as an inchoate clearing, and thus completed his "claim," he returned to Knob Creek on foot. Loading his bedding, kitchen utensils, and other portable property on two borrowed horses, and gathering his little family about him, he then began his hegira from a State where the aristocracy of negro ownership was the passport of respectability, to a State where
Is king o' men, for a' that!
Many scenes, replete with pathos, are presented in the realistic drama of the American pioneer; and this was one of them. The fall had set in; the nights were cold, and the adjuncts to comfort while camping-out were meagre. The father and mother were compelled to walk. The two little children, aged respectively nine and seven, were uncomfortably disposed among the packs with which the horses were loaded. Arrived at the Ohio River, the horses were sent back and the goods, augmented by those which had been transported by means of the river, were loaded on a hired wagon and hauled out to the claim, where they were deposited. Without a single domestic animal, three miles from any neighbor, with no protection from the approaching winter storms but the now leafless trees, no defence from the cold but an open brush fire, and no shelter from the rude weather but the few ragged clothes they chanced to have, they present to the imagination a picture more pitiable than that of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, or, indeed, of any of the more spectacular scenes of pioneer life.
The first essential enterprise was to construct a shelter for his family, and the father went resolutely at work to fabricate not anything arising to the dignity of a cabin but a camp. Of this the mode and style of construction were as follows: A slightly sloping patch of ground was selected where two straight trees stood about fourteen feet apart, east and west of each other. The pioneer then cut down a number of small straight trees, and cut the tops off, so that the finished product would be fourteen feet long. Then the helpful wife would trim off the superfluous branches, and the entire family, two at each end of a log, would somehow tug the logs to the place needed. Two-thirds of these logs would be notched at one end and flattened at the other; and the remaining third would be notched at each end. The two trees which had been selected as corner posts for the structure were denuded of their bark on the sides facing each other, and the prepared logs placed in position by building three sides of a crib, pinning the flat ends of the logs to the trees by wooden pins, to receive which an auger hole had been previously bored through the log and into the tree itself. Thus the series of three logs superimposed upon each other formed three sides of the primitive camp, leaving the south side exposed to the weather. A roof of small poles and branches, brush, dried grass, and any other suit- able material which could be gathered up, completed the camp, into which their little furniture was disposed, and dried leaves gathered and arranged in the two corners for the four occupants to repose on when night should spread her sable mantle over the quiet solitude. The gaps were at leisure filled up with branches, mud, and anything which could be procured. A log fire kindled and kept up, night and day, in front of the camp, completed the establishment. Such an aboriginal structure as this served for an entire year as a home for the family that included the most famous man of modern times. This species of home was not inapt for a pioneer and his family in the summertime or in good weather; but when drenching storms came, or a south wind drove the smoke into the camp so as to compel evacuation by the inmates, it was extremely uncomfortable, if not, indeed, intolerable.
It was, in fact, a hunter's camp, such as city men even now are wont to occupy for a habitation during a few weeks of good weather, for the novelty of a change from civilized life. For a mother and young children, during foul and fair weather alike, it was, however, the most cruel travesty of a home that can well be conceived.
Indiana had just been admitted as a State, and the new dignity was alluring settlers from the neighboring States of Kentucky and Ohio. So Thomas Lincoln, the pioneer of Pigeon Creek, made a journey to Vincennes to make his land entry from the government. He walked all the way, going and coming. Southern Indiana was then a dense virgin forest, having every variety of the hard woods indigenous to that zone. "Varmints," as the early settlers termed them—wildcats, opossums, raccoons, etc.—abounded; likewise deer, wild turkeys, grouse, quails, and pheasants. Indeed, most of the animal food was procured by the rifle.
Nearby the Lincoln settlement was a famous "deer lick"—a low place where saline water exudes from the ground, and to which wild animals were wont to repair for the salt, they themselves forming in turn objects of the hunter's quest. From this lick the Lincolns derived the chief part of their provender.
Here, in the forest primeval, on the backwater of civilization, this little family of four pursued their dull round of existence without a solitary bubble of the zest of life. They rose with the robin and commenced their weary round of drudgery. The father felled trees; the mother lopped off the branches; the little ones piled brush, hoed away weeds, and walked a mile to the nearest source of water supply, bearing back the heavy burden between them. There was not a pair of shoes among the four. Home-made moccasins served to ward off the snows and frosts of winter.
The united efforts of all the members of this little family served to keep the wolf from the door and also to show some progress toward a more comfortable state of existence; and in one year from the date of the first unpromising settlement in this virgin wilderness, a log cabin, situated a few rods distant from the camp, offered a better shelter, and gave token of Thomas Lincoln's ambition, and of his advancement towards a higher condition of life.
This cabin was formed of undressed logs, about eighteen feet square, with a "stick-and-mud" chimney; a hole for egress and ingress, in which was hung an untanned deer's hide, to defend, in some sort, against the assaults of the weather; and the only exterior light was acquired through the imperfect media of the broad chimneyplace and the cracks between the logs. The table was the flat surface of a bisected log, termed a puncheon, into which were inserted four legs by means of an auger. In lieu of chairs, there were small puncheons resting upon three legs. In lieu of bedsteads, stout poles were inserted in the spaces between the logs which formed the cabin, the two outer ends being supported by a crotched stick, driven into the ground floor of the wretched abode. The bedding and bedclothes, dishes and cooking utensils were in harmony with the cabin and its rustic furniture; and stout pins inserted in the logs constituted a substitute for the staircase or the "elevator" of civilization. This miserable abode was embosomed in brush, and unadorned with any suggestion of refined rusticity or halo of romance.
Lincoln's report of the new country, being roseate, probably more than facts warranted, induced some of his Kentucky neighbors to migrate thither; and accordingly Mrs. Lincoln's aunt and uncle, Betsy and Thomas Sparrow, arrived at the Lincoln place in November, 1817, bringing with them Dennis Hanks, who was a cousin-german to Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and, of course, a second cousin to the future President. This family camped in the recently deserted camp of the Lincolns, where they remained till they, too, could get up in the world as their kinsman had done.
For some time after the settlement in Indiana, there was no school in that primitive, sparsely settled neighborhood, but when Abraham was eleven years of age there was a school opened in a log shanty about one and a half miles distant from his home, by one Hazel Dorsey,—the term "Hazel," which formed a component part of the teacher's name, being supposed to refer to a species of twig whose use in the rude schoolroom was auxiliary to good scholarship. Andrew Crawford was Abraham's next teacher, his ministrations occurring in the winter of 1822–3, as nearly as can be defined. Finally one Swaney opened a school, pronounced by him skule, about five miles from the Lincoln home in 1826, which Lincoln attended for a very short time, and these three schools in Indiana, and two in Kentucky, comprise all that he ever attended; the total time consumed (as Lincoln told Swett) being about four months in all. And such schools! If erudition was ponderable, all that the entire five teachers knew could have been compassed in a thimble. The future President himself said: "There were some schools, so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writin', and cipherin' to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age, I did not know much."
At the time when Thomas Lincoln settled in Indiana, the county was named Perry, and its county-seat was known as Troy, on the Ohio River, but the country settled so rapidly that a new county was formed called Spencer, the county-seat of which was Rockport. A few years after the advent of the Lincolns, a little trading-post was established within less than two miles of their home, which, taking its name from its principal settler, was denominated Gentryville. Corydon, the county-seat of Harrison County, was then also the State capital, it having been so selected when the State was admitted into the Union. There was but one county between Harrison and Perry counties.
Although Thomas Lincoln had changed his residence from a camp to a cabin, it was not an extremely radical change from discomfort to comfort, for the cabin had neither a door nor windows; egress and ingress were had through an opening which was designed ultimately to accommodate a door. The house was likewise innocent of a floor, save the bare and naked earth. These omissions appeared all the more signifi- cant and objectionable from the better order of things in that line, inherent in the surroundings of other settlers, who were rapidly settling in the neighborhood. Poor children! Young Abe and his sister could not but observe with longing eyes the newly erected cabins of the newcomers rejoicing in puncheon floors, doors from boards hewed out of a straight-grained log, with occasionally a glazed sash to admit light.
This beautiful Pigeon Creek valley, like all sublunary pleasures, had its sting, its fly in the ointment. A disease equally to be dreaded with the cholera, and very similar alike in its manifestations and fatality, brooded like a spell over it, making it "a valley of the shadow of death." It prevailed in the wooded regions of both Indiana and Illinois, and was called, in the homely and inaccurate vernacular of those regions, "milk sick." It was a mysterious disease, and baffled science and medicine alike. In less than two years from the settlement of Thomas Lincoln on Pigeon Creek, his wife, and her uncle and aunt, all succumbed to this dread disease and died; and Thomas Lincoln by the aid of a neighbor constructed with a whipsaw from the native timber coffins for each of these three victims. In the primeval forest, the remains of Nancy Hanks Lincoln were placed in a rude box, made from native lumber, a very much coarser receptacle than fruit trees are transported in by nurserymen at this day ; and in the presence and by the aid of a mere handful of the neighbors, without ceremony, unanointed and unaneled, were committed to the grave. Even the grave remained without the slightest attempt at culture or adornment until 1879, when Mr. P. E. Studebaker of South Bend, Ind., having heard of it, proposed to Hon. Schuyler Colfax to head a subscription with fifty dollars in order to mark the spot with a suitable monument. Colfax assured him that the sum of fifty dollars alone would provide a monument sufficient and in harmony with the surroundings. The philanthropist thereupon caused to be erected a very neat marble monument, although the exact spot where the inanimate body crumbled into dust is involved in some doubt. It bears this inscription : "Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of President Lincoln. Died October 5th, A.D. 1818, aged 35 years. Erected by a friend of her martyred son, 1879."
The mother thus commemorated was a woman "of sorrows and acquainted with grief." She was a child of the frontier, whose whole brief life was employed in removing from one frontier post to another, and carving out from the rude wilderness a frontier home.
In the little group which followed the body of this most faithful wife and mother to its last abode was one who was not satisfied with this heathen burial ; and he set himself resolutely at work to retrieve this neglect, and to secure to the burial of his revered mother an ex post facto ceremony and semblance of a Christian interment. In those days, in the frontier, stated and periodical ministrations from the sacred desk were not an institution on account of the paucity and poverty of the people. The pioneers, however, were content to accept the pious offices of such migratory clergymen as might chance to sojourn over Sunday in the neighborhood, in their wanderings. And thus a few years after his mother's death, young Abraham with considerable diplomacy for a lad of ten years, contrived to have an itinerant preacher named Daniel Elkin deliver a funeral discourse, commemorative of the merits and humble and unobtrusive virtues of this modern Mary—the mother of one charged with a mission akin to the Divine!
Meanwhile, the desolation of that little humble household aroused the sympathy of the few neighbors, who "took turns" in aiding the youthful housekeeper, but a little turned of eleven years of age, to maintain in semi-comfort this semblance of a home. Sarah Lincoln, however, possessed the heroism and resolution of her departed mother, and entered with fidelity into the duties of the little household, now increased by the presence of Dennis Hanks, whose home had been broken up by the death of his uncle and aunt.
As must be apparent, a house presided over by a child of eleven years could not be expected to be strongly suggestive of home comforts.
That Thomas Lincoln himself was not oblivious of this is evident from the fact that he gathered together what little capital he could, spruced up a little, and in the ensuing fall set off on a visit to the scenes of his youth in Kentucky, to procure a wife to solace his lonely hours and to serve as a mother to his neglected children.
As I have said, when he formed his alliance with Nancy Hanks, he had paid attention to Sallie Bush. Sallie had married one Johnston, who afterwards became the jailer of Hardin County, an office then held in higher honor than it is now. Now Mrs. Johnston was not only a rare woman, as the sequel fully attests, but she also was a most excellent housekeeper, and a faithful and devoted mother. Thomas was a shrewd observer, and the death of Johnston about the time he had lost his own companion giving him opportunity, with characteristic energy and directness of purpose he resolved to lay close siege to the affections of the widow and force an early capitulation. Accordingly, upon his arrival in Elizabethtown, he at once repaired to the home of the fair widow, who lived with her two girls and one boy. He must have arranged matters satisfactorily in one interview, for the next day he married the widow. As a wedding present he paid all her small debts, the amount being about twelve dollars. On the succeeding day the second-hand bride, the second-hand bridegroom, three children, and a comfortable load of furniture and bedding were en route to the new home, where the two neglected, motherless, and lonely children were doing the best they could, painfully to wear out the time till the father should return with the "surprise" that he had probably promised them.
Sallie Bush, who was thus predestined to be a second mother to the great President, came from one of the most numerous and most respectable families in that part of Kentucky. One of her nephews is Hon. W. P. D. Bush, a leading lawyer of Frankfort, Ky., who was the State reporter from 1866 to 1878. Another was Hon. S. W. Bush, one of the leading lawyers of Hardin County, and a third, Hon. Robert Bush, holding a similar rank at Hawesville. A niece was the wife of Hon. Martin H. Cofer of Elizabethtown, who was a Circuit Judge of that Circuit, and became Judge of the Court of Appeals in August, 1874, for the term of eight years, serving also as Chief Justice from 1879 till his death. This distinguished family were very devoted to their aunt, and also have a high respect for the memory of Thomas Lincoln. They resent even now any imputation upon his moral worth. He was not eminent as a financier, so neither was his illustrious son. A granddaughter of one of the Elizabethtown merchants has her grandfather's account books, which attest that Thomas Lincoln was an excellent and prompt customer, if not, indeed, an extravagant one, for living in a community that used hickory bark for suspenders, he at one time indulged in "one pair silk suspenders, $1.50."
Abraham's inner life was a desert of sorrow with an occasional oasis watered by well-springs of happiness. And probably the greenest spot in his memory was the sight of his father, returning after a week's absence, driving a four-horse team hitched to a heavily loaded wagon, which, on its arrival, diclosed a quantity of homely and substantial household goods, and, what was even more joy-inspiring, a considerate, motherly-looking woman, who, clasping the neglected boy and girl to her heart, and calling them Abe and Sallie, told them that henceforth she was to be their mother, and that the three children who had climbed down from the load and were shyly hiding behind her, were also to be their brother and sisters. How Abe's tender heart glowed with gladness and gratitude as he saw feather-beds and blankets, coverlids and tablecloths, chairs and "stand tables" loaded into the small cabin, usurping nearly the whole space!
Joy reigned supreme in the little Lincoln cabin that evening as the augmented family sat down to the first good meal which had graced the little puncheon table since Nancy Hanks had taken to her bed with the fatal "milk sick." And as, at a late hour, Abe climbed into the loft with a companion whom he had already learned to call "John," and sank into the tender embrace of the most comfortable bed he had ever known, and compared notes and experiences with his new brother till a late hour, it is safe to assert that no such fine and unadulterated happiness ever visited him afterwards.
Mr. Lincoln once told me (in 1856) that John D. Johnston, his foster-brother, was about his own age, and that he loved him as if he had been his own brother; and yet John grew up to be one of the laziest and most shiftless of mortals. He constantly appealed to Lincoln for aid for himself and his progeny. I myself once strained a point, for Lincoln's sake, to save Johnston's son William from the penitentiary. And it is to the infinite credit of the great President that he adhered to, and came to the assistance of, not only his father and step-mother, and never deserted them, but that his fidelity even to the utterly worthless child of this remote connection was equally tenacious.
Almost the last act he performed in Illinois was to visit his step-mother. On the morning he started, he urged me to go with him, and, in fact, I went with him part way, and I have always since regretted that I did not accompany him during the entire journey.
His deep and earnest affection for his step- mother was returned in full measure by her. "Abe was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect, to see," was her summing-up of his character. As she parted with him at Charleston, 111., on the third day of February, 1861, this old lady, whose whole life had been one of unobtrusive goodness, embracing the President-elect, had a presentiment that it was their last meeting—a premonition which was afterwards so completely fulfilled. She had dimly known by the loose talk in her little rustic neighborhood of the mighty issues involved in her loved stepson's election, and she already saw, in her prophetic vision, the collision of a mighty people, and in this mighty conflict she felt that the central and pivotal figure could not escape.
And Abraham Lincoln experienced the maternal solicitude, sympathy, and kindness of his second mother in all ways. This most excellent woman and model step-mother brought comfortable things and essential domestic reforms to pass, without any jar or apparent effort. First a "shutter" appeared in the opening for a door; next, a puncheon floor was laid, and, anon, a half-glazed sash admitted light. Clean beds, clean clothes, clean towels, clean tablecloths were all in place. The wash-day came regularly, good fare graced the table, order was enthroned. The family altar was inaugurated, and the family hearth assumed a sacredness begotten of prevalent good cheer, happiness, and the amenities which sweeten existence. The dooryard was cleaned of unsightly litter, a brood of fowls lent animation to the scene, and material comfort dissipated the soul's melancholy. If Nancy Hanks Lincoln were conscious of the rare fidelity with which Sarah Bush Lincoln executed the trust of maternal solicitude to her children, her perturbed spirit at last found rest.
New settlers flocked into the neighborhood; a store was instituted nearby; stated religious services followed; systematic social intercourse among the young folks ensued; and ere long, in all directions, the ruddy and cheerful blaze of hearth-fires, gleaming through clear window panes instead of oiled paper, attested the advent of real civilization. To the genial requirements of this new order of life, Abraham Lincoln was no delinquent. The entertaining qualities which were captivating in his manhood's prime, found exuberant vent in his youthful glow. Boylike, he was frivolous rather than sedate, reckless rather than responsible, and the mental vigor and volume which evolved the Cooper Institute speech or yielded the Emancipation Proclamation, were expended in satirical poems and coarse pasquinades, which had no apparent range or objects beyond diversion or petty social revenges, and were confined to the fleeting moment and to the little backwoods coterie which was wont to gather in the store or blacksmith's shop at Gentryville, or in the "corn-huskings" or "log-rollings" thereabouts.
Abe was no empty-headed country beau, however. He was even then more of a student than gallant. A story is told of a conversation he had, under idyllic circumstances, with a pretty girl of fifteen, where his playing the schoolmaster instead of the lover was rather resented by his fair companion. As the two young people sat barelegged on a log and dangled their feet in the limpid waters of Little Pigeon Creek, and talked the light and frothy chatter of their age, the sun sank low in the west, and the little miss exclaimed: "See, Abe, the sun's going down!" "No," returned Abe with the importance of superior knowledge, "the sun doesn't go down; it's we that do the sinking." But the pert auditor ended the explanation with the conclusive rejoinder, "Abe, you're a fool."
At the age of seventeen, he was six and a third feet high, his feet and hands were unusually large, and his legs and arms disproportionately long; his head was small and phrenologically defective; his body very diminutive for one of his height. His walk was awkward; his gestures still more so; his skin was of a dirty yellowish brown, and shrivelled and baggy, even at that age. He was attired in buckskin pants which failed to conceal his blue shinbones; his shirt was of a fabric known to pioneer, and to no other life, as linsey-woolsey; and in winter he was clad in what is known as a warmus; and finally, a coonskin cap, home-made, and moccasins, also home-made, protected and decorated respectively his upper and nether extremities. He was bizarre-looking, even in that primitive community. Abraham Lincoln, whether as boy or man, was not enamoured of steady, hard work; he preferred a variety of tasks, chiefly mental labor. He was by no means lazy, but was fond of frequent change. Accordingly, throughout his youthful career, he is seen to select such engagements and avocations as allowed him to interweave variety with industry and mental labor or recreation with muscular labor. "Going to mill" was a favorite avocation with him, as it had been with Henry Clay, "the Mill-boy of the Slashes." Abe rode seven miles to a treadmill, into which, on his arrival, he put his horse to furnish the power for grinding. On one of these occasions young Abe's horse kicked him, so that he was unconscious for quite a while. On recovering his senses, he completed a sentence that he was in the midst of uttering when the accident took place. In after life he was fond of speculating upon this psychological phenomenon.
One of the early settlers paints the moral portrait of this region in the primitive days of its settlement in sombre colors. "The settlers were very sociable and accommodating, but there was more drunkenness and larceny on a small scale, more immorality, less religion, less confidence."
One of Mr. Lincoln's youthful characteristics, and one which adhered to him through life, was his uniform kindness to any and all living things. A favorite pastime with boys of Pigeon Creek was to catch a mud "terkle," and put a live coal on his back in order to enjoy the diversion of witnessing him writhe with pain. The youthful humanitarian was wont to inveigh, in emphatic terms, against this barbarism; sometimes putting his thoughts and monitions on paper, and reading them to the boys. Another peculiarity of his youth and manhood alike was a habit of superficial and desultory reading. A short book he might read entirely through; a long one he would read conscientiously for a few chapters, and then skim through the rest. Such books as Weems's "Washington" he would read through consecutively; "Robinson Crusoe" he would not read by rote, but would select chapters to suit his fancy, and ultimately, perhaps, read all; "Æsop's Fables" and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" he would read in patches.
He was inordinately fond of books, but was not fond of consuming a great amount of time with any particular one, at any one time. A specifically verbose book he never read clear through, unless at wide intervals of time. He was prone to jot down anything of philosophy, poetry, or history which arrested his attention strongly. This was not done so much to preserve it, as to fix the thought embodied or fact narrated firmly in his memory. After writing it he would study it, then lay it aside for a time, then recur to it; if, on consideration and reconsideration, it struck him as superlatively valuable, he would try to retain it. And he had unused sheets of paper, copybooks, fly-leaves of books, etc., on which he preserved these memoranda, sticking them in out-of-the-way places. Books were rare and scarce in the days of his youth. Thomas Lincoln owned literally none but the Bible. His illustrious son's early acquaintance with any literature beyond the domain of primary schoolbooks was derived from those which he could borrow from neighbors. The sources of supply, however, were of an extremely attenuated character. A neighbor named Josiah Crawford possessed a copy of Weems's "Washington," a highly spiced, mendacious, and stupid string of anecdotes of the early days in Virginia and elsewhere, euphemistically termed "a Life of Washington." Abraham readily borrowed it, and read and studied it of evenings. One night it was ruined by rain, and Lincoln at once sought the lender, and reported the loss, and the superfluous fact that he had not the wherewithal to pay. An agreement was therefore made that young Abe should pull fodder for three days in repayment. There does not appear anything out of the way in all this; wages were very low then and books very rare; there was no bookstore nearer than Louisville, and the loss of a needed book in that neighborhood was well-nigh irreparable. It is even doubtful if Crawford would voluntarily have exchanged the book for three days’ labor of a lad, but Lincoln, somehow, took great umbrage at Crawford's animus in the matter, as well as at the conditions exacted; and thereafter was wont, for the amusement of the neighborhood to satirize the offender in the coarsest and most suggestive doggerel, using Crawford's physical shortcomings as a text. This reprehensible trait of character did not adhere to Mr. Lincoln beyond his youthful prime; he abandoned it, as he grew and expanded in intellect, together with sundry other foibles, and as a man was as magnanimous and charitable as he was revengeful and satirical as a youth.
Lying down was Lincoln's favorite attitude while reading or studying. This remained a habit with him throughout life. He also was fond of reading while at table. He always enjoyed reading aloud, or commenting on a book to a companion, whoever he might be. I once knew of his making a pupil of a hostler in his study of Euclid on the circuit. He did not, like Archimedes, run through the streets crying "Eureka!" but he was so joyous at his geometrical lesson that he must share his happiness, even though he could find no better auditor than a stableman.
In his youth, Lincoln might have been encountered in a cabin loft, or under a tree, or anywhere in the shade, or in some out-of-the-way place, intent on his book. He would record his lucubrations on a wooden fire shovel, then shave it off with a draw-knife, and repeat the performance. While in the field at work he would be immersed in deep thought. As soon as he reached his home or his shelter, he would resume his book, if he had one, or his charcoal sketches, if he had none. If he could not obtain manual possession of a book by borrowing, he would repair to the place where it was and thus use it. Among other books which he read in that way was the "Statutes of Indiana," which one Turnham, a constable, possessed, ex officio. This gave him an inclination toward the profession of law.
Abraham exhibited a proclivity for public speaking at an early age; anywhere that he could gather a crowd he was ready with a speech. His addresses were generally germane to the surrounding conditions, and "sometimes turned out a song, and sometimes turned out a sermon." Not infrequently, of a Sabbath when the old folks were at "meetin'," the youthful orator would edify the young folks at home by an improvised sermon. Upon such occasions, he would adopt the usual order of religious exercises, the prayer alone being omitted. A hymn would be selected and sung by the juvenile audience. His preaching frequently drew tears from his sympathetic auditory, in which, occasionally, he would join.
In the cornfield, his oratorical powers frequently were in demand. Often when a resting spell came, Abe would mount half-way of the fence, and steadying himself on the remainder, would thrill or amuse his hearers by a speech, sometimes political, sometimes polemical, sometimes jocular. He never failed to create an interest; in fact, his oratory was a great nuisance to employers who were interested that the work should be speedily performed. Another quality which adhered to him during his entire life was his good humor, leading to a personal popularity with those with whom he came in close contact. Wherever he worked, he would find his way speedily to the kitchen, where he would rock the cradle, or draw water, wash dishes, or empty slops; meanwhile amusing all present with drollery or humor. Some of the men were inimical to him, but there was not a woman but who was extravagant in her laudations, even including Josiah Crawford's wife, whose husband he had so mercilessly lampooned.
His step-mother thought quite as much of him as of her own children ; his step-brother and sisters were as devoted to him as to each other, while his own sister idolized him. The closer the attrition with Lincoln, the more ardent and close the cordiality of the friendship. He was ever the best of boys and men, and had always
. . . a tear for pity,
And a hand open as day for melting charity.
When he was sixteen years old, he entered into the service of one Taylor, who owned and operated a ferry franchise across the Ohio at the mouth of Anderson Creek. Here Lincoln remained as a boy-of-all-work, for nearly a year, earning six dollars a month ; and at another time both he and his sister were hired out to Josiah Crawford, the former as a field hand, the latter as kitchen-maid. There is hardly a field within a radius of two miles of Gentryville in which the great Emancipator has not wrought at the humblest of labor for what would now be deemed insignificant wages.
It was noticeable to companions that, when Abraham had attained the age of eleven years or thereabouts, he fell into that habit of abstraction, absent-mindedness, and self-introspection which constituted so marked and prominent a feature in his character in his later days. Whereas he presented no appearance of gravity or decorum theretofore, he suddenly awoke to a deep sense of responsibility; and gravity of manner usurped the former characteristics of frivolity and mental vacuity.
Mr. Lincoln was a versatile genius, whether as man or boy. His mind was constantly on the go; he hopped about from one thing to another, never adhering to one thing long. He wrote doggerel poetry of no merit whatever; it was sometimes didactic, occasionally philosophical, but generally satirical. A single day's labor was a composite of story-telling, studying all the primitive studies then known to his locale, writing Chronicles (as he called them) in derision of some one who exhibited ludicrous phases of character, doing chores from choice and more robust work from compulsion, with occasional lapses into earnest and sombre reflection.
Gentryville was a little world by itself. No circus or lecturer ever came within its borders. Its inhabitants lived within themselves, and entertained each other the best they could in a social style, and while Lincoln was in great demand as an entertainer and otherwise, he yet had to endure rebuffs which he took as seriously to heart as if he had been fashioned in an ordinary mould of humanity. A noted instance of the truth of the Scriptural adage that "the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the headstone of the corner," appeared in the great double wedding of two sons of Reuben Grigsby, which important occurrence was closed by a gorgeous infare. To this great social demonstration Abraham was not invited, although every other young person in the neighborhood, including his own sister, was. And he took a terrible social revenge, for he put in commission his heaviest batteries of wit and satire, and churned up a social convulsion whose effects remained, like festering sores, for a long time thereafter. Lincoln certainly wielded a free lance in those days. An exuberance of animal spirits had to be worked off in some way, and Lincoln was the Douglas Jerrold and Sydney Smith, combined, of the neighborhood about Gentryville.
The satirical element clove to him through life, though he suppressed it generally in his responsible years. I have known him, however, in the privacy of a judicial circle (but very rarely) to impale an object disagreeable to him on a sarcastic lance quite as effectually, and in better style than in his youthful days.
Although there was little in common between Lincoln and his father, yet they were alike in possessing prodigious strength. The stories which are told of Abraham's power in this line are doubtless exaggerated, but the fact remains that in all the fights in which either he or his father engaged, they prevailed every time, and that Abraham was especially sought for when feats of muscle were in demand.
Abraham did, indeed, venture beyond his own bailiwick both in the moral and physical world. Thus he wrote an elaborate essay on "Our Government," when he was but a little turned of seventeen years old, in which he betrayed a knowledge which could hardly be deemed indigenous to Gentryville. He also wrote an article on "Temperance," which was published in a weekly paper.
A village lyceum was one of the institutions of the little hamlet of Gentryville. The sessions were held in Jones's store, where the auditors and disputants sat on the counter, on inverted nail kegs, or lolled upon barrels or bags, while the wordy contest raged. The questions selected for discussion were not concrete. At one time there would be a debate upon the relative forces of wind and water; at another, upon the comparative wrongs of the Indian and the negro; the relative merits of the ant and the bee; also of water and fire. Then, as later, Lincoln would enforce his views largely by comparison and by illustrations, by sallies of wit and homely anecdotes. It was always understood that fun was ahead when "Abe Linkern" took the floor.
Upon one occasion Abraham walked to Booneville, fifteen miles, to attend a session of the circuit court. One Breckenridge, a lawyer with merely a local fame, made a speech in a murder case which captivated the youthful aspirant; and as he walked home after dark, his vivid fancy wrought like scenes of forensic glory for himself.