In The Boyhood of Lincoln Part 16

_Extent and violence of the waves._

The waves behind impel the waves before, Wide-rolling, foaming high, and tumbling to the sh.o.r.e.

_Pensive numbers._

In these deep solitudes and awful cells, Where heav'nly pensive contemplation dwells, And ever-musing melancholy reigns.

_Battle._

Arms on armor clashing brayed Horrible discord; and the madding wheels Of brazen fury raged.

_Sound imitating reluctance._

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned; Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

A spelling exercise followed, in which the pupils spelled for places, or for the head. Abraham Lincoln stood at the head of the cla.s.s. He was regarded as the best speller in Spencer County. He is noted to have soon exhausted all that the three teachers whom he found there could teach him. Once, in after years, when he was asked how he came to know so much, he answered, "By a willingness to learn of every one who could teach me anything."

"Abraham," said Master Crawford, "you have maintained your place at the head of the cla.s.s during the winter. You may take your place now at the foot of the cla.s.s, and try again."

The spelling for turns, or for the head, followed the method of the old Webster's "Speller," that was once so popular in country schools:

ail, to be in trouble.

ale, malt liquor.

air, the atmosphere.

_h_eir, one who inherits.

all, the whole.

awl, an instrument.

al-tar, a place for offerings.

al-ter, to change.

ant, a little insect.

a_u_nt, a sister to a parent.

ark, a vessel.

arc, part of a circle.

All went correctly and smoothly, to the delight and satisfaction of Josiah Crawford and Aunt Olive, until the word _drachm_ was reached, when all the cla.s.s failed except Abraham Lincoln, who easily pa.s.sed up to the head again.

The writing-books, or copy-books, were next shown to the visitors. The writing had been done on puncheon-desks with home made ink. Abraham Lincoln's copy-book showed the same characteristic hand that signed the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. In one corner of a certain page he had written an odd bit of verse in which one may read a common experience in the struggles of life after what is better and higher. Emerson said, "A high aim is curative." Poor backwoods Abe seemed to have the same impression, but he did not write it down in an Emersonian way, but in this odd rhyme:

"Abraham Lincoln, His hand and pen, He will be good, But G.o.d knows when."

The exercises ended with a grand dialogue translated from Fenelon between Dionysius, Pythias, and Damon, in which fidelity in friendship was commended. After this, each of the visitors, Aunt Olive included, was asked to make a "few remarks." Aunt Olive's remarks were "few," but to the point:

"Children, you have read well, and spelled well, and are good arithme_tickers_, but you ain't sot still. There!"

Josiah Crawford thought the progress of the school had been excellent, but that more of the rod had been needed.

(Where had all the green bushes gone in the clearing, but to purposes of discipline?)

Then good Brother Jasper was asked to speak. The "wizard" who could speak Latin arose. The pupils could see his great heart under his face.

It shone through. His fine German culture did not lead him away from the solid merits of the forest school.

"There are purposes in life that we can not see," he began, "but the secret comes to those who listen to the beating of the human heart, and at the doors of heaven. Spirits whisper, as it were. The soul, a great right intention, is here; and there is a conscience here which is power; and here, for aught we can say, may be some young Servius Tullius of this wide republic."

Servius Tullius? Would any one but he have dreamed that the citizens of Rome would one day delight to honor an ungainly pupil of that forest school?

One day there came to Washington a present to the Liberator of the American Republic. It looked as follows, and bore the following inscription:

[Ill.u.s.tration: "To Abraham Lincoln, President, for the second time, of the American Republic, citizens of Rome present this stone, from the wall of Servius Tullius, by which the memory of each of those brave a.s.sertors of liberty may be a.s.sociated. Anno 1865."]

It is said that the modest President shrank from receiving such a compliment as that. It was too much. He hid away the stone in a storeroom of the capital, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the White House. It now const.i.tutes a part of his monument, being one of the most impressive relics in the Memorial Hall of that structure. It is twenty-four hundred years old, and it traveled across the world to the prairies of Illinois, a tribute from the first advocate of the rights of the people to the latest defender of all that is sacred to the human soul.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PARABLE PREACHES IN THE WILDERNESS.

The house in which young Abraham Lincoln attended church was simple and curious, as were the old forest Baptist preachers who conducted the services there. It was called simply the "meeting-house." It stood in the timber, whose columns and aisles opened around it like a vast cathedral, where the rocks were altars and the birds were choirs. It was built of rude logs, and had hard benches, but the plain people had done more skillful work on this forest sanctuary than on the school-house.

The log meeting-house stood near the log school-house, and both revealed the heart of the people who built them. It was the Prussian school-master, trained in the moral education of Pestalozzi, that made the German army victorious over France in the late war. And it was the New England school-master that built the great West, and made Plymouth Rock the crown-stone of our own nation. The world owes to humble Pestalozzi what it never could have secured from a Napoleon. It is right ideas that march to the conquest, that lift mankind, and live.

It had been announced in the school-house that Jasper the Parable would preach in the log church on Sunday. The school-master called the wandering teacher "Jasper the Parable," but the visitor became commonly known as the "Old Tunker" in the community. The news flew for miles that "an old Tunker" was to preach. No event had awakened a greater interest since Elder Elkins, from Kentucky, had come to the settlement to preach Nancy Lincoln's funeral sermon under the great trees. On that occasion all the people gathered from the forest homes of the vast region. Every one now was eager to visit the same place in the beautiful spring weather, and to "hear what the old Tunker would have to say."

Among the preachers who used to speak in the log meeting-house and in Thomas Lincoln's cabin were one Jeremiah Cash, and John Richardson, and young Lamar. The two latter preachers lived some ten miles distant from the church; but ten miles was not regarded as a long Sabbath-day journey in those days in Indiana. When the log meeting-house was found too small to hold the people, such preachers would exhort under the trees. There used to be held religious meetings in the cabins, after the manner of the present English cottage prayer-meetings. These used to be appointed to take place at "early candle-lighting," and many of the women who attended used to bring tallow dips with them, and were looked upon as the "wise virgins" who took oil in their lamps.

It was a lovely Sunday in April. The warm sunlight filled the air and bird-songs the trees. The notes of the lark, the sparrow, and the prairie plover were bells--

"To call me to duty, while birds in the air Sang anthems of praise as I went forth to prayer,"

as one of the old hymns used to run. The buds on the trees were swelling. There was an odor of walnut and "sa.s.safrax" in the tides of the sunny air. Cowslips and violets margined the streams, and the sky over all was serene and blue, and bright with the promise of the summer days.

The people began to gather about the meeting-house at an early hour. The women came first, in corn-field bonnets which were scoop-shaped and flaring in front, and that ran out like horns behind. On these funnel-shaped, cornucopia-like head-gears there might now and then be seen the vanity of a ribbon. The girls carried their shoes in their hands until they came in sight of the meeting-house, when they would sit down on some mossy plat under an old tree, "bein' careful of the snakes," and put them on. All wore linsey-woolsey dresses, of which four or five yards of cloth were an ample pattern for a single garment, as they had no use for any superfluous polonaises in those times.

Long before the time for the service the log meeting-house was full of women, and the yard full of men and horses. Some of the people had come from twenty miles away. Those who came from the longest distances were the first to arrive--as is usual, for in all matters in life promptness is proportioned to exertion.

When the Parable came, Thomas Lincoln met him.

"You can't preach here," said he. "Half the people couldn't hear you.

You have a small voice. You don't holler and pound like the rest of 'em, I take it. Suppose you preach out under the trees, where all the people can hear ye. It looks mighty pleasant there. With our old sing-song preachers it don't make so much difference. We could hear one of them if you were to shut him up in jail. But with you it is different. You have been brought up different among those big churches over there. What do you say, preacher?"

"I would rather preach under the trees. I love the trees. They are the meeting-house of G.o.d."

"Say, preacher, would you mind goin' over and preachin' at Nancy's grave? Elder Elkins preached there, and the other travelin' ministers.

Seems kind o' holy over there. Nancy was a good woman, and all the people liked her. She was Abraham's mother. The trees around her grave are beautiful."