In The Boyhood of Lincoln Part 32

"Wait--time tells the whole truth; and worth is worth, and pa.s.ses for the true gold of life in time."

"Ye don't think that there's any chance for him yet, do ye, elder, after lettin' the Indian go, and failin', and havin' that melancholy spell?"

"Yes, I do. My spiritual sense tells me so."

"Yer spiritual sense! Elder, ye ought to go to school. Ye are nothin'

but a child yerself. And let me advise ye never to have anythin' more to do with that there Indian boy. Fishes don't swim on rocks, nor hawks go to live in a cage. An Indian is an Indian, and, mark my words, that boy will have yer scalp some day. He will, now--he will. I saw it in his eye."

The Tunker journeyed toward the new town of Springfield, Illinois, along the fragrant timber and over the blooming prairies. Everywhere were to be seen the white prairie schooner and the little village of people that followed it.

Springfield was but a promising village at this time, in a very fertile land. Probably no one ever thought that it would become a capital city of an empire of population, the hub of that great wheel of destiny rimmed by the Wabash, the Mississippi, Rock River, and the Lake; and still less did any one ever dream that it would be the legislative influence of that tall, laughing, sad-faced boy, Lincoln, who would produce this result.

Jasper preached at Springfield, and visited the log school-house, and told stories to the little school. He then started to walk to New Salem, a distance of some eighteen or twenty miles.

It was a pleasant country, and all things seemed teeming with life, for it was now the high tide of the year. The prairies were billows of flowers, and the timber was shady and cool, carpeted with mosses, tangled with vines, with its tops bright with sunshine and happy with the songs of birds.

About half-way between the two towns Jasper saw some lofty trees, giants of the forest, that spread out their branches like roofs of some ancient temple. There were birds' nests made of sticks in their tops, and a cool stream ran under them. He sought the place for rest.

As he entered the great shadow, he saw a tall young man seated on a log, absorbed in reading a book. He approached him, and recognized him as young Lincoln.

"I am glad to meet you here, in this beautiful place," he said.

"This is my college," said Lincoln.

"What are you studying, my friend?"

"Oh, I am trying my hand at law a little. Stuart, the Springfield lawyer, lends me his law-books, and I walk over there from New Salem to get them, and when I get as far back as this I sit down on this log and study. I can study when I am walking. I once mastered forty pages of Blackstone in a walk. But I love to stop and study on this log. It is rather a long walk from New Salem to Springfield--almost twenty miles--and when I get as far back as this I feel tired. These trees are so grand that they look like a house of Nature, and I call them my college. I can't have the privileges of better-off young men, who can go to Philadelphia, New York, or Boston to study law, and so I do the best I can here. I get discouraged sometimes, but I believe that right is might, and do my best, and there is something that is leading me on."

"I am glad to find you here, Abraham Lincoln. I love you in my heart, and I wish that I might help you in your studies. But I have never studied law."

"But you do help me."

"How?"

"By your faith in me. Elder, I have been having a hard row to hoe, and am an unlucky fellow. Have been keeping a grocery, and we have failed--failed right at the beginning of life. It hurt my pride, but, elder, it has not hurt my honor. I've worked and paid up all my debts, and now I am going to pay _his_. I might make excuses for not paying his part of the debts, but, elder, it would not leave my name clear. I must live conscience free. People call me a fool, but they trust me. They have made me postmaster at New Salem, though that ain't much of an office. The mail comes only once a week, and I carry it in my hat.

They'll need a new post-office by and by."

"My friend, you are giving yourself a moral self-education that has more worth than all the advantages of wealth or a famous name or the schools of Boston. The time will come when this growing people will need such a man as you to lead them, and you will lead them more grandly than others who have had an easier school. You have learned the first principles of true education--it is, the habit that can not do wrong without feeling the flames of torment within. Every sacrifice that you have made to your conscience has given you power. That power is a G.o.dlike thing. You will see all one day, as I do now."

"Elder, they call me a merry-maker, but I carry with me a sad heart. I wish to tell you, for I feel that you are my true friend. I loved Ann Rutledge. She was the daughter of James Rutledge, the founder of our village and the owner of the mill on the Sangamon. She was a girl of a loving heart, gentle blood, and her face was lovely. You saw her at the tavern. I loved her--I loved her very name; and she is dead. It has all happened since you were here, and I have wished to meet you again and tell you all. Such things as these make me melancholy. A great darkness comes down upon me at times, and I am tempted to end all the bright dream that we call life. But I rise above the temptation. Elder, you don't know how my heart has had to struggle. I sometimes think of my poor mother's grave in the timber in Indiana, and I always think of _her_ grave--Ann Rutledge's--and then it comes over me like a cloud, that there is no place for me in the world. Do you want to know what I do in those hours, elder? I repeat a long poem. I have said it over a hundred times. It was written by some poet who felt as I do. I would like to repeat it to you, elder. I tell stories--they only make me more melancholy--but this poem soothes my mind. It makes me feel that other men have suffered before, and it makes me willing to suffer for others, and to accept my lot in life, whatever it may be."

"I wish to hear the poem that has so moved you," said the Tunker.

Abraham Lincoln stood up and leaned against the trunk of one of the giant trees. The sunlight was sifting through the great canopy of leaves, boughs, and nests overhead, and afar gleamed the prairies like gardens of the sun. He lifted his long arm, and, with a sad face, said:

"Elder, listen.

"'Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He pa.s.seth from life to his rest in the grave.

"'The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around, and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.

"'The infant a mother attended and loved, The mother that infant's affection who proved, The husband that mother and infant who blest-- Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

"'[_The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,_ _Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by;_ _And the memory of those who loved her and praised,_ _Are alike from the minds of the living erased_.]

"'The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne, The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn, The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave, Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

"'The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep, The beggar who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the gra.s.s that we tread.

"'[The saint who enjoyed the communion of Heaven, The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.]

"'So the mult.i.tude goes, like the flower or the weed That withers away to let others succeed; So the mult.i.tude comes, even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told.

"'For we are the same our fathers have been; We see the same sights our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, we view the same sun, And run the same course our fathers have run.

"'The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging they also would cling; But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.

"'They loved, but the story we can not unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come; They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

"'They died, ay, they died: we things that are now, That walk on the turf that lies over their brow, And make in their dwellings a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

"'Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sunshine and rain; And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge, Still follow each other like surge upon surge.

"''Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud-- Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?'"

He stood there in moody silence when he had finished the recitation, which was (unknown to him) from the pen of a pastoral Scotch poet. The Tunker looked at him, and saw how deep were his feelings, and how earnest were his desires to know the true way of life and to do well his mission, and go on with the great mult.i.tude, whose procession comes upon the earth and vanishes from the scenes. But he did not dream of the greatness of the destiny for which that student was preparing in the hard college of the woods.

"My education must always be defective," said the young student. "I can not read law in great law-offices, like other young men, but I can be just--I can do right; and I would never undertake a case of law, for any money, that I did not think right and just. I would stand for what I thought was right, as I did by the old Indian, and I think that the people in time would learn to trust me."

"Abraham Lincoln, to school one's conscience to the habit of right, so that it can not do wrong, is the first and the highest education. It is what one is that makes him a knight, and that is the only true knighthood. The highest education is that of the soul. Did you know that the Indian whom you saved was Main-Pogue?"

"Yes."

"And that Main-Pogue is the uncle and foster-father of my old guide, Waubeno?"

"No. Waubeno was the boy who came with you to the Wabash?"

"Waubeno's father was killed by the white people. He was condemned to death. He asked to go home to see his family once more, and returned upon his honor to die. That old story is true. Does it seem possible that an English soldier could ever take the life of an Indian like that?"

"No, it does not. Will Main-Pogue tell Waubeno that it was I who saved him?"

"Does Main-Pogue know you by name? I hope he does."

"He may have forgotten. I would like for him to remember it, because the Indian boy liked me, and an Indian killed my grandfather. I liked that Indian boy, and I would do justice, if I could, by all men, and any man."

"Lincoln, I came to love and respect that Indian boy. There was a native n.o.bility in him. But my efforts to make him a Christian failed, for he carried revenge in his heart. I wish that he could know that it was you who did that deed; your character might be an influence that would strike an unknown cord in the boy's heart, for Waubeno has a n.o.ble heart--Waubeno is n.o.ble. I wish he knew who it was that spared Main-Pogue. Acts teach where words fail, and the true teacher is not lips, but life. The boy once said to me that he would cease to seek to avenge his father's death if he could find a single white man who would defend an Indian to his own harm, because it was right. Now, Lincoln, you have done just the act that would change his heart. But he has gone with the winds. How will he ever hear of it? How will he ever know it?