salt springs to which they resorted in great numbers; on the wider expanses, the buffaloes had recently fed; on others, the arriving pioneer had fixed his camp and built his cabin.
The knoll on which Thomas Lincoln had placed his house was free from trees, and sloped gently away on every side. The spot had every charm and every advantage except one: there was no good water within a mile, and it fell to the lot of these children to bring from that distance the water required for drinking.
Carpenter as he was, Thomas Lincoln had not taken the trouble either to finish or to furnish his house. It had no floor, no door, no windows. There were three or four three-legged stools in the house, and no other seats. The table was a broad slab supported by four legs, with the flat side upward. There was a bedstead made of poles stuck in the cracks of the logs in one corner of the cabin, the other ends being supported by forked sticks sunk in the earthen floor. On these poles some boards were laid, upon which was thrown a covering of leaves, and these in turn were covered with skins and old clothes. For cooking utensils the family possessed a Dutch oven and a skillet. There was a loft in the upper part of the cabin; but as this shiftless pioneer had not made either stairs or ladder, little Abe was obliged to climb to his perch at night by pegs driven into the logs.
The children were no better cared for than the house. They were ill-clad, ill-fed, untaught, and harshly treated. The father, naturally disposed to indolence, found it so easy to subsist in that rich country by his rifle, with which he was extremely expert, and from his patch of corn and potatoes, which his wife and children cultivated, that he gave way to his natural disposition, and passed his time, when he was not hunting, in telling stories to
