CHAPTER IV.

THE NEW ELEMENTS.

A Step-mother-The Arrival of Civilization-Picture and Reality.

THE courtship of Thomas Lincoln succeeded triumphantly, and he and Mrs. Sarah Bush Johnston were married. His brother-in-law, Ralph Krume, volunteered his own services, with four horses and a wagon, to convey the household wealth of the bride to her new home in Indiana. She had been prudent and industrious and she had accumulated much, according to the ideas prevailing on the frontier. One massive bureau which she owned had cost, when new, no less than forty dollars, and it was still as good as new. She owned much bedding; a large chest of clothing; table furniture; cooking utensils, and many other articles of use and luxury, the like of which had never yet been seen under any roof belonging to Thomas Lincoln. Her three children, a boy, John, and two girls, Sarah and Matilda, were all quite young and went with her. She had known the first Mrs. Lincoln, and she was already well acquainted with the boy and girl who were to be her step-children, having even shown a strong liking for little Abraham before he left Kentucky.

The children waited in the cabin, day after day and week after week, with but dim ideas of what might be in store for them; but one afternoon, late in December, there was a shout at the edge of the clearing. A four-horse team was driven slowly in, drawing a well-filled wagon. Their father had indeed returned.

He had brought with him a new mother for

them, two sisters, a brother, and to Abraham Lincoln, in particular, his first help and hope.

Mrs. Lincoln found her step-children in a dreadful condition. Their pitiful lack of everything needful, made such an appeal to her motherly heart that she was better able to overcome her strong indignation at the squalid reality of Thomas Lincoln's home, as compared with his verbal pictures of it. The mops of tangled hair; the bare, frost-cracked feet; the scanty, tattered raiment; the unwashed hands, and the surprised faces, shyly, sadly trying to welcome her; all helped her to forgive the rose-colored fiction which had enticed her into the woods. She was a Christian woman, actuated by a strong sense of duty. Long years afterwards she told the story of that meeting, and of her own feelings, adding: “Poor things! I said. 'I'll make 'em look a little more human.""

If a change had arrived in the lives of the children, so it had in that of Thomas Lincoln. The cargo of the wagon was transferred to the cabin, and Mr. Krume departed, but Tom was set at work. He was compelled at once to put down the solid timber floor which ought long since to have covered the pounded earth. The window-holes received glazed sashes. A swinging door shut out the winter wind, at last, and every cor ner of the house testified to the fact that a new force had entered it. There was but one book, as yet, a large Book, which did not rest on the table all the while, for Mrs. Lincoln was a reverent reader of it. It was not a great while before it had another—a boyish reader not so reverent, but who nevertheless learned from it lessons which bore rich fruit in after time.

The stores of clothing which Mrs. Lincoln brought with her were distributed impartially, even Dennis Hanks being cared for with due benevolence. The children learned, for the first time, what it meant to be not only fed, but washed, combed, clad warmly, and provided with clean and comfortable beds. It was true that the one room of that log-house was somewhat crowded. There were three boys, now, to climb hand over

hand into the loft at night. There were also three girls to assist Mrs. Lincoln in the performance of the duties of her thrifty housekeeping, and to be instructed by precept and example in all the womanly ways and knowledges which had made Sally Bush so respectable, as maid or matron. She gave especial attention, moreover, to the improvement of the moral and religious character of her husband, but it was not until the year 1823 that he was led to join the Baptist church, of which she was a member. His daughter Nancy appears to have been sometimes called Sarah, at an earlier day, but from this time forth to the day of her death she was known by that name only, although there were two other Sarahs in the house.

As for little Abraham, he had received a new mother, and wonderful matters with her. He had suddenly stepped out of misery into a new life. He was clean and clothed and comfortable and well fed, with such a home as he had never known before. Another and a greater thing came dawning in upon the darkness of his stunted life, for he had found some one whom he could love with all his heart, and love her he did, and he was well assured of her love for him. To the end of his life, she was the "mother" to whom his memories went back, although beyond her, in an earlier and darker hour of his morning-time, was the form of his first, his own mother. God is very merciful to children as to all their early troubles and bereavements; and little Abe had been without any mother at all for nearly a year and a half when his father returned from that most profitable trip to Kentucky.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln herself could not have wished anything bettes than all this reformation for those she had left behind her. It was a work requiring more than she had been able to give. At the same time, while the love her son had borne for her could not cease, it could and did transfer itself, in a marked manner, to the noble-hearted woman who had now taken his mother's place. She had taken it so fully, so lovingly, so conscientiously, that he responded with his whole

heart. Toward the end of his life, after he had grown to manhood, attained greatness, finished his work and passed away, she said:

"I can say what scarcely one woman, a mother, can say, in a thousand. Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested of him. I never gave him a cross word in my life. . . His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to run together. He was here after he was elected President "-tears interrupted her there, but she soon added: "He was dutiful to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys; but I must say, both being now dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see."

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.

He

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. 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