The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln Part 5

"THE BEGINNING OF LOVE"

"The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." It must have been about this time that the lad had the following experience, which he himself related to a legal friend, with his chair tilted back and his knees "c.o.c.ked up" in the manner described by Cousin John Hanks:

"Did you ever write out a story in your mind? I did when I was little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first of the kind I ever heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a good deal, and one day, when I was sitting out in the sun by the house, I wrote out a story in my mind.

"I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me.

"I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was one we had left a few hours before and went in.

"The next night we tried again, and the same thing happened--the horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father that he ought to give her to me.

"I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once; but I concluded it was not much of a story.

"But I think that was the beginning of love with me."

HOW ABE CAME TO OWN WEEMS'S "LIFE OF WASHINGTON"

Abe's chief delight, if permitted to do so, was to lie in the shade of some inviting tree and read. He liked to lie on his stomach before the fire at night, and often read as long as this flickering light lasted.

He sometimes took a book to bed to read as soon as the morning light began to come through the c.h.i.n.ks between the logs beside his bed. He once placed a book between the logs to have it handy in the morning, and a storm came up and soaked it with dirty water from the "mud-daubed"

mortar, plastered between the logs of the cabin.

The book happened to be Weems's "Life of Washington." Abe was in a sad dilemma. What could he say to the owner of the book, which he had borrowed from the meanest man in the neighborhood, Josiah Crawford, who was so unpopular that he went by the nickname of "Old Blue Nose"?

The only course was to show the angry owner his precious volume, warped and stained as it was, and offer to do anything he could to repay him.

"Abe," said "Old Blue Nose," with bloodcurdling friendliness, "bein' as it's you, Abe, I won't be hard on you. You jest come over and pull fodder for me, and the book is yours."

"All right," said Abe, his deep-set eyes twinkling in spite of himself at the thought of owning the story of the life of the greatest of heroes, "how much fodder?"

"Wal," said old Josiah, "that book's worth seventy-five cents, at least.

You kin earn twenty-five cents a day--that will make three days. You come and pull all you can in three days and you may have the book."

That was an exorbitant price, even if the book were new, but Abe was at the old man's mercy. He realized this, and made the best of a bad bargain. He cheerfully did the work for a man who was mean enough to take advantage of his misfortune. He comforted himself with the thought that he would be the owner of the precious "Life of Washington." Long afterward, in a speech before the New Jersey Legislature, on his way to Washington to be inaugurated, like Washington, as President of the United States, he referred to this strange book.

"THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH"

One morning, on his way to work, with an ax on his shoulder, his stepsister, Matilda Johnston, though forbidden by her mother to follow Abe, crept after him, and with a cat-like spring landed between his shoulders and pressed her sharp knees into the small of his back.

Taken unawares, Abe staggered backward and ax and girl fell to the ground together. The sharp implement cut her ankle badly, and mischievous Matilda shrieked with fright and pain when she saw the blood gushing from the wound. Young Lincoln tore a sleeve from his shirt to bandage the gash and bound up the ankle as well as he could. Then he tried to teach the still sobbing girl a lesson.

"'Tilda," he said gently, "I'm surprised. Why did you disobey mother?"

Matilda only wept silently, and the lad went on, "What are you going to tell mother about it?"

"Tell her I did it with the ax," sobbed the young girl. "That will be the truth, too."

"Yes," said Abe severely, "that's the truth, but not _all_ the truth.

You just tell the whole truth, 'Tilda, and trust mother for the rest."

Matilda went limping home and told her mother the whole story, and the good woman was so sorry for her that, as the girl told Abe that evening, "she didn't even scold me."

"BOUNDING A THOUGHT--NORTH, SOUTH, EAST AND WEST"

Abe sometimes heard things in the simple conversation of friends that disturbed him because they seemed beyond his comprehension. He said of this:

"I remember how, when a child, I used to get irritated when any one talked to me in a way I couldn't understand.

"I do not think I ever got angry with anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper--and has ever since.

"I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down, trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.

"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, and had put in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend.

"This was a kind of a pa.s.sion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now when I am bounding a thought, till I have bounded it east, and bounded it west, and bounded it north, and bounded it south."

HIGH PRAISE FROM HIS STEPMOTHER

Not long before her death, Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, called upon Mrs. Sarah Lincoln to collect material for a "Life of Lincoln" he was preparing to write. This was the best of all the things she related of her ill.u.s.trious stepson:

"I can say what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say, Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I asked him. His mind and mine seemed to run together.

"I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys, but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see."

"Charity begins at home"--and so do truth and honesty. Abraham Lincoln could not have become so popular all over the world on account of his honest kindheartedness if he had not been loyal, obedient and loving toward those at home. Popularity, also, "begins at home." A mean, disagreeable, dishonest boy may become a king, because he was "to the manner born." But only a good, kind, honest man, considerate of others, can be elected President of the United States.

CHAPTER VII

ABE AND THE NEIGHBORS

"PREACHING" AGAINST CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

Nat Grigsby stated once that writing compositions was not required by Schoolmaster Crawford, but "Abe took it up on his own account," and his first essay was against cruelty to animals.

The boys of the neighborhood made a practice of catching terrapins and laying live coals on their backs. Abe caught a group of them at this cruel sport one day, and rushed to the relief of the helpless turtle.

s.n.a.t.c.hing the shingle that one of the boys was using to handle the coals, he brushed them off the turtle's sh.e.l.l, and with angry tears in his eyes, proceeded to use it on one of the offenders, while he called the rest a lot of cowards.

One day his stepbrother, John Johnston, according to his sister Matilda, "caught a terrapin, brought it to the place where Abe was 'preaching,'

threw it against a tree and crushed its sh.e.l.l." Abe then preached against cruelty to animals, contending that "an ant's life is as sweet to it as ours is to us."