CHAPTER V.

A GENUINE START.

Growth-Schooling-Beginnings of Human Society in the Backwoods. THERE was a surprise in store for the new mother, and it was by no means an unpleasant one.

As soon as her step-son's bodily wants had been attended to and the house was in order for comfortable living, she set herself at work to discover how much Abe knew, and what. He was willing enough to be "examined;" but who would have expected to find that he had picked up, from the teachings of Nancy Lincoln or during his few weeks of rough schooling in Kentucky, both reading and writing? Not that he could show any marked proficiency in either, but enough to mark him at once as a learner of more than common capacity.

He had learned and he had not forgotten, and he had even made some use of his acquirements; and his new mother determined that it was time he should begin to add to them.

Over on Little Pigeon Creek, a mile and a half from the Lincoln farm, a log schoolhouse had been built by the settlers, near the grand new "meeting-house," also mainly of logs, and the two were witnesses that civilization was breaking through the darkness of the Indiana woods. A man named Hazel Dorsey had been secured as schoolmaster, and it was said of him that he could teach reading and writing and arithmetic. What more could be asked for in the way of scholarship? Little indeed by the bevy of boys and girls who were sent to him by Mrs. Lincoln, with such irregularity as was made compulsory by their many home duties.

The news of their new educational prospects did not bring

the same meaning to all of them, but it was the opening of a wide gate to little Abe. He was growing faster than ever now. Since the new arrivals, filling the log-house to overflowing, he and Dennis had slept in the loft, climbing to it by a ladder of wooden pegs driven into the logs. The bed was a coarse bag filled with corn-husks, and was a narrow one for two such boys. If one turned over, the other had to. And yet there were now three boys in that bed every night, and two of them were beginning to crowd each other in a terrible

manner.

First, there was Dennis Hanks, only counting for one boy, then or afterwards; there beside him lay Abraham Lincoln, an uncommonly tall, vigorous body of a boy for his age: and that seemed to be all the bed contained. But inside of Abe was another boy, taller, larger every way, to whom there had now arrived a beginning of almost unlimited "growth."

Nobody could guess how tall that inner boy might yet become, with space to grow in. He had but a vague idea of it, as yet, himself; but it was much that he had any idea at all.

Quickly, silently, night by night and day by day, he determined that he would grow, and his new mother continually and lovingly encouraged him. The two were building better than they knew, and the whole world, for ever and ever, had an interest in Mrs. Lincoln's womanly perception of her step-son's capacity and her unselfish efforts to afford him such opportunities as her narrow means permitted.

The settlement was now a growing one, and the farms were no longer so far apart. A man named Gentry was about to open a country store only a mile and a half, or so, from the Lincolns, and a village would surely gather around it; and the store and village were also to be a school for Abe, but he was to go to Hazel Dorsey's first. His schoolhouse was a queer enough affair. It was just high enough inside for a man to stand up straight in, and the windows were fitted with greased paper instead of glass.

A mile and a half is no great distance to walk to such a school as that, if children have shoes and the snow is not too deep. Reading and writing and the art of "ciphering" were to be walked after, and these were treasures none too common in the cabins of the earlier settlers of Indiana. It is possible that Abe did his walking more easily than the rest; but it is matter of record that before long he could "spell down" all the other scholars of Hazel Dorsey, and could read anything he could lay his hands on.

The first term of study was a short one, for the winter melted rapidly away, and with the coming of settled spring weather the school had to be closed, that teacher and pupils alike might turn their attention to planting corn and potatoes.

The school at the log schoolhouse on Little Pigeon Creek was closed indeed, and would not open again until another winter; but the one which Abraham Lincoln was really attending could not shut its door at all, and the lessons went on at all hours.

In the first place, the body which contained him was growing at such a tremendous rate that he was a man in height before he was fifteen years old, and by the time he passed his seventeenth birthday he was as tall as he ever would be. That is, he stood, barefooted, six feet and four inches of thin and bony awkwardness. It was just such a body, doubtless, as was required for the residence of such a boy as he was. There would never be any great amount of mere polish or elegance about either it or him; but vast stores of natural strength were forming in both, capable of undergoing severe training for the work before them.

Good Mrs. Lincoln very soon despaired of keeping Abraham in clothes that would fit him. It was not so much that he wore things out too rapidly, as that he grew out of and away from whatever she could put upon him. There was yet another difficulty. Cloth of any kind was scarce and dear, and a great part of any boy's apparel had to be made of buckskin,

and that is a material which can hardly cease to shrink and shrivel. So, while Abe's long legs were continually lengthening, his buckskin trowsers were continually diminishing, from day to day, in their capacity for holding or covering the legs they were provided for. However loose they might be when made, a few wettings in dewy corn-fields and rainy woods, or in fording the creeks and sloughs, would surely produce a tighter fit than any tailor could plan.

Stockings were out of the question at any time; and when, on special occasions or in cold weather, the luxury of shoes was to be indulged in, these were always of a low-quartered leathersaving pattern. All shoemaking among the settlers was done at home or by some neighbor who had picked up enough of the cobbler's art to put together such materials as might be brought to him.

There was apt to be an ample length of bare blue ankles between the lower border of Abe's tight buckskins and the tops of his home-made shoes; and this was a peculiarity of his wardrobe which clung to him for years and years. Nevertheless, except for growing out of it so fast and so far, he did not differ much in his apparel from any other boy among the settlers near Little Pigeon Creek. Some of the very latest arrivals might wear for a season the garments they came in, but in due course of wear and tear these were sure to be replaced by the regular backwoods uniform.

The boys were somewhat worse off than the girls with reference to clothing, for a gown of linsey-woolsey or of homespun jeans, no matter how skimp its pattern or how high its waist might be, could be provided with "tucks" to let out, from time to time, like the reefs of a sail. The forest maidens, however, were as independent as their brothers in the matter of shoes and stockings. Strict economy required that, in all good weather and in some that was a little bad, a young lady going to meeting or to an evening party should carry her shoes in her hand until near her destination. It was even expected that

if, in the course of an evening, there should be over-much dancing performed, she should take them off again, lest a good pair of shoes should be wasted frivolously.

Social features were steadily increasing in number and importance, now there were so many neighbors within a few miles of Mr. Gentry's store. The beginning of a village had been fairly made, and religious meetings of several kinds, and parties and merry-makings of a great many kinds, broke rapidly in upon the old-time monotony of frontier life. The woods had ceased to be a wilderness.