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mud would still have been a thing to cause alarm and astonishment, if found.

Yet another good arrival brought with him a "History of the United States," and this afforded abundant employment for the fire-shovel and the scrap-book.

There were other wonders of literature which were not to be borrowed, but to be read by the friendly light of the fireplaces from which they could not be carried away. Among these was a small book which told of more wonderful achievements than even the History, for it was Sindbad the Sailor's own account of his perilous voyages.

There was teaching in that book of a specially important nature, for it told of lands and peoples heretofore not so much as dreamed of by the overgrown stepson of Mrs. Sally Lincoln. It helped Robinson Crusoe to make the world wider for him; and when spring came and there were grass and dry leaves in the woods to lie down upon, he could loaf under the trees and dream of ships and oceans and far-away countries where all things were so different from the life he had known in Kentucky and Indiana.

He was now fifteen years old, and of course he had heard of George Washington. He knew by oral traditions, vague and fragmentary, that the Father of his Country had at one time lived in the backwoods and had fought hard battles with the Indians. His delight was great, therefore, when one day old Josiah Crawford, the crustiest of his neighbors, consented to let him carry home a copy of Weems's "Life of Washington." It was a small, thin book in a sheepskin cover, but no other or greater biographer has ever dealt with the deeds of any hero in a spirit of more exuberant enthusiasm. It was slow, intense, instructive reading. Each page had to be dwelt upon and gone over and over, and there were copious notes to be made on wood and copied into the scrap-book. Bedtime was a hateful intruder upon such delight as that, and it was hard to be forced away from it and compelled to lift himself, peg by peg, into

the dark loft above, and separated even from the very paper and binding.

Night after night, with special care, the book was deposited upon a little shelf against the wall of the room below. There were two stout pegs in the log, and a shingle laid across them made the shelf. The book should have been in safety there, if anywhere. It was a pity, however, that Abe should have failed to examine the mud "chinking" of those logs, for it had fallen out just above the shelf, leaving a crack which was full of peril to literature. There came a night, when he and Dennis Hanks were sound asleep, that was full of wind and rain. Gust after gust drove in the flying water through the cranny in the wall, and the shelf was flooded and the precious book was drowned.

When morning came, there lay the soaked and ruined relics of the only "Life of Washington" in all that part of Indiana. It was of little use to dry the leaves in the sun. Abe did so with sorrowful care, and then he bore them home to their owner; but old Josiah refused to receive them.

"Reckon I'll have to make it good somehow," said Abe, mournfully. "What's it wuth?"

"Seventy-five cents; and I don't know whar I'll git another." He might as well have said seventy-five thousand, and Abe very frankly told him so.

"Well, Abe," said old Josiah, at last, "seein' it's you, I tell ye what I'll do. You pull fodder for me three days, at twentyfive cents a day, and I'll call it squar.'

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"I'll do it, and I'll jest keep what thar is left of the book." It had been a well-thumbed, dog's-eared affair, and Crawford had sold it to Abe, after this fashion, at a remarkably high price. So high, in fact, that Abe's remorse did not prevent his sense of justice from rebelling even while he consented to come and pull the fodder. He and Josiah Crawford were never more good friends, and more than a little good-tempered "getting even" had to be performed for a long time afterwards.

CHAPTER VII.

FRONTIER TRAINING.

Oratorical Beginnings-Frontier Politics-Hiring Out-A Wedding and a Funeral-Studies among Plain People-A Glimpse into Law.

Now that there were so many settlers, the religious gatherings at the Little Pigeon Creek meeting-house became more frequent. Whenever there was preaching of any kind, Mrs. Sally Lincoln was sure to go, and to insist on taking her husband with her. It made small difference to Tom, indeed, to what sect the preacher of the day might belong. He himself had been, in his day, a member of several sects, and not a very shining ornament to either of them. No change whatever was required when he moved from one into another.

The young people were frequently left at home; but they had preaching among them nevertheless, albeit with more of rough fun than profitable doctrine in the sermons. No sooner were their elders out of sight among the trees than the family Bible would come down from its shelf, and Abe knew its contents quite well enough to find any text he wanted.

"Now, girls," he would say, "you and John and Dennis do the cryin'. I'll do the preachin'."

A hymn or so was given out and sung, and the sermon was only too likely to be a taking off of the style and eccentricities of some traveling exhorter they had heard at the meetinghouse. Not always, indeed; for Abe once preached a sermon, on his favorite theme of "cruelty to animals," which was re membered for many years by one little girl, a neighbor, who was that day a member of his childish congregation.

The born orator within him was coming to the surface, and

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

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