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.

Toil, Fun and Frolic-Books and Speaking Matches-A Severe Lesson in
Caste-Practical Teachings on Temperance-1825.

THE Lincoln cabin was a small one. So large a family could hardly make themselves comfortable in one room and a loft, now that its younger members were so fast growing towards maturity. The farm, too, was limited in its capacity, and so there were reasons why Abe was permitted to have his own way in the matter of "working out." His longest hiring at any one place began in the year 1825, when he went to work for James Taylor, who owned the ferry across the Ohio River, at the mouth of Anderson's Creek. There were books to be had at Taylor's, and new ideas were to be picked up from the people of all sorts who from time to time were passengers in the rude ferryboat.

There were duties for Abe in great abundance, for he was man-of-all-work about the house and farm. Perhaps the most distasteful of all was grinding corn in a hand-mill, or grating the green ears for Mrs. Taylor's cookery. His hatred of cruelty to animals did not at all stand in the way of his being a good hand at butchering hogs in "killing time." His feelings, however, or his books, or his many industries, or all combined, prevented him from forming any taste for hunting. Game was so plentiful that the smaller varieties were a pest to the farmers. They were slaughtered to get rid of them, rather than for the table. Deer, bears, wild turkeys, were made to be eaten, and formed an important part of any man's calculations for his supply of provisions for the year. Wild

cats and even panthers were still sufficiently numerous to render uncomfortable at times the idea of lonely walks after nightfall.

It was a wild country if judged by standards accepted in older communities, but a change was creeping over the ways and manners of the Gentryville and Pigeon Creek settlers. They were becoming somewhat crowded by each other. Here and there were farms whose borders actually touched, and there was much more fencing required than in former days. There was greater sociability, of course, and there were larger gatherings at the meeting-house on Sundays. Right along with these, in growing size and frequency, came the cornshuckings, log-rollings, chopping-bees, shooting-matches, dances, and other contrivances for getting the neighbors together for a frolic.

Abraham Lincoln was not the boy to willingly miss a frolic of any kind, and as a general thing he was pretty sure of invitations, for he had faculties and accomplishments which were in demand. To his old-time capacity as a story-teller he was now adding a turn for satire and travesty, which now and then got him into difficulties, for his love of fun forbade him to spare anything worth taking off, and his reverence was as yet an undeveloped part of his character. Even in carefully listening to a sermon, he was too apt to remember with it every oddity and eccentricity of the preacher, and the whole would soon be reproduced, with ludicrous precision of gesture and intonation, before the uproarious congregations at the merry-makings. There was only too much that was odd and even grotesque in the frontier preaching of that day, good and useful as were some of the preachers, and the irreverent mimic had ample matter for his performances.

From reciting the poetry of others there was but a step to an attempt at manufacturing verses on his own account. It was not long before the ambitious boy of all work and devourer of all books made for himself a local reputation as a