preaching in the house on Sundays led very naturally to stumpspeaking in the fields on other days in times of political excitement. Abe began his training in that school before he was sixteen years old. He advanced so rapidly that before long he could draw the hands in a corn-field away from their husking at any moment by the droll originality of his boyish addresses. It was a positive relief to a young fellow who was thinking so much and so hard to talk out some part of his internal fermentation. Political affairs occupied a large share of the thoughts and conversations of the Pigeon Creek people, and were attended to from house to house as the best possible excuse for a visit and chat.

A whole family could go over and make a call upon another family, and visitors were always welcome. There was the freest hospitality. If there were not chairs and benches enough, the floor was an excellent place for man or woman to sit down upon. If apples were scarce, or if the supply had given out, a plate of raw potatoes or turnips, nicely washed, could be offered instead, with a bottle of whisky: and there was the very soul of liberality in the offering.

There was one feature of frontier hospitality, indeed, to which Abraham Lincoln never at any time took kindly. He could not bring himself to the use of any description of intoxicating liquor, and in due time he both spoke and wrote against what he perceived to be a social curse and scourge. Such a body as his might perhaps have been persuaded to accept the common custom, but the clear common-sense of his inner boy rebelled and prevented him from acquiring a taste for anything containing alcohol.

Body and mind, he was now growing with tremendous rapidity; but the lessons he was receiving did not come by way of any professional school-teacher after he triumphed over "manners" and the spelling-book under Andrew Crawford.

One lesson of life began with a wedding in the old loghouse, when Nancy, or rather Sally, Hanks Lincoln reached her

eighteenth year. It was the merriest day the place had seen since Tom Lincoln halted his tired horses on the knoll and planned his first "pole-shelter." Sally became Mrs. Grigsby, and left her father's cabin to live in that of her husband.

It was not too far away for Abe to make frequent visits to his married sister; but within the year the young bride was removed to a more distant country, and Aaron Grigsby was a widower.

Abraham was now the sole remaining child of Mrs. Nancy Hanks Lincoln, but he was as a favorite son to his loving stepmother. The shadows grew deeper upon his queer, strongly marked face whenever it was in repose, but there was somewhat less of that than formerly. The great sociability of his nature was called into more frequent activity as time went on. His love of fun and his peculiar capacity for making it rendered him a welcome visitor throughout the scattered settlement. He was liked by all women old and young for his kindliness, and he was the most popular of all the idlers who strolled from their cabins and corn-fields into what had now become the village of Gentryville. Idling, in fact, at all seasons when no work is pressing, is one of the fixed institutions of a new country, and this may in part be owing to the amount and nature of the compulsory hard work.

As for Tom Lincoln, the older he grew the stronger became his tendency to shift the drudgeries of his farm upon Abe and John Johnston and Dennis Hanks, but his thrifty and stirring wife insisted that the work should be done by some one. Abe did his duty by her, as she affectionately boasted in after-years, but he was now developing a strong preference for working upon any other piece of ground than the Lincoln farm. He chose to hire himself out to other farmers for any kind of labor, even if his father got most of the benefit by receiving his wages for him. His services were always in request. He could chop more wood, handle more hay, husk more corn, and lift a heavier weight than any other young fellow to be had

for the hiring, and he was perpetually good-humored and obliging. He was a favorite with all children, and their mothers liked to have around the house a "hand" who, after his field-work was over, was equally ready to 'tend baby, go for a bucket of water, tell a story, or recite any required amount of poetry. His memory held everything tenaciously and in condition for instant use. It was stored not only with the miscellaneous contents of his scrap-book and with such passages of prose or verse as had impressed him in his reading, but also with every telling jingle he had heard. If he went to meeting, he could afterwards repeat the sermon almost word for word. The very narrowness of his singular course of study had put his naturally good memory into excellent training, and he did not as yet know so many things, acquired either by sight or hearing, that his mind had not ample space and elbow-room for all of them.

From house to house and from farm to farm the tall stripling went the rounds as he might be hired, little thinking or caring how thorough a knowledge he was by that means obtaining of the character of the different classes of people who were filling up the great West. He could but study them unconsciously as he went and came, and he was learning more about them than some of them knew about themselves. He knew from whence they had emigrated, and how people lived in those distant communities. He became familiar with habits, prejudices, superstitions, religious beliefs, political ideas, social distinctions, varied hopes and fears, and aspirations and disappointments. He learned, too, somewhat of different nationalities and the races of which these settlers were born or had descended, and to what extent they had become intelligent members of a self-governing community.

He could not know at the time through what a school he was passing, but every step of his after-life proved that not any of those hard lessons-by-the-way, so useless to another man, had been wasted upon him. There was no manner of miracle

in his intimate knowledge of the thoughts and ways and feelings of "the plain people.”

He began now to seek and find drier and more difficult studies. A friend of his named David Turnham had been made "acting constable" of the settlement, and had purchased a copy of the "Revised Statutes of Indiana" to guide him in the duties of his office. David was firm in the idea that a constable should always have his printed instructions at hand for reference, and the book was not to be borrowed, but Abe was welcome to come to the owner's house and read the laws. It was very different reading from Robinson Crusoe or Weems's Washington, but it was pored over none the less persistently. Abraham Lincoln was beginning his legal studies, but with only a faint conception of what a lawyer might be. Getting law from such a book as that was something like getting wheat-flour or corn-meal from a horse-mill, such as they all resorted to on Pigeon Creek. There was but one within reach; and when a farmer went to it with a load of grain, he set his own horses at the work of turning the mill when his turn came. A full day's hard toil turned out about fifteen bushels, without any "bolting." All that kind of finishing was to be done at home. Still, it was better than a mere hand-mill, as that had been an improvement on the primitive mortar and pestle. Some of Abe's law-study, indeed, must more have resembled the work of the mortar and pestle, and all results were much like the flour from the horse-mill. A kind of learning was in them, but all unsifted, and his strong memory retained the veriest "bran" of the statutes of Indiana.

Abe was less and less at home nowadays, but his loving stepmother by no means lost sight of him. She had strong hopes and convictions concerning his future, and she encouraged him continually. She well deserved the hearty affection with which he accepted her entirely as his "mother." He gave her so much and so steadily, through all that time, that when, many long years afterwards, her great, gloomy, fun-lov

ing boy had lived out his useful life, and a whole people stood in tears around his coffin, she was able to say, between her own sobs, that he never gave her an unkind word or look or one solitary act of disobedience.

So it was a woman, and a "mother," who gave him his most important help during those his earlier school-days, and to whom he was most largely indebted for the good use of all the rest. His development could not have been the same with her good work omitted.