The Wonderful Story of Lincoln Part 2

The Lincoln boy could have shielded himself, as to the damaged book, behind personal irresponsibility for an accident, or he could have flatly refused to make good. If so, we may well guess that he would never have been President of the United States, and would never have served America in its dire peril so as to be honored by the whole world. He was not that kind of a character. As we trace the steps of moral integrity, the trivial incident becomes powerfully significant.

The Lincoln boy made good. He worked three days for the owner of the damaged book, so that another should not suffer loss through any kindness or good-will to him; also, beyond that, he could have no rest nor peace while any wrong existed between him and another man.

From that time on he had before him the vision of a great American.

Washington became his ideal type of character, and that ideal no doubt helped much to make him the patient power he was in the great crisis of his nation's existence.

The rough and hard never hurt any one if they are healthy interests; the rude and uncultured wrong no taste if they are moral; and poverty injures n.o.body when it is clean and persevering and safe. So the hard requirements, rude living and dest.i.tute means only strengthened the boy more and more for the heroic responsibilities requiring such a type of manhood.

It is said that he memorized and often repeated for self-encouragement the homely old verses of the song, "Try, Try Again."

"When you strive, it's no disgrace Though you fail to win the race; Bravely, then, in such a case, Try, try again.

That which other folks can do, Why, with patience, may not you?

All that's been done, you may do, If you will but try."

In a copy book the following lines, still preserved, were written by Lincoln:

"Abraham Lincoln his hand and pen.

he will be good but G.o.d knows when."

This pathetic glimpse of the childhood dream may account for his profound interest in boys and boyhood. When he had reached world-wide fame he said, "The boy is the inventor and owner of the present, and he is our supreme hope for the future. Men and things everywhere minister unto him, and let no one slight his needs."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lincoln reading by Firelight.]

CHAPTER III

I. THE LINCOLN BOY AND HIS SISTER

The wilderness never brought forth a more wonderful being than the child that became one of the greatest names in the history of America.

Deep in the wild woods of Kentucky, in the humblest conditions of nature, farthest from the inventions of society, there arose a mind that gave great riches of thought to the making of civilization.

Lincoln and his sister "hired out," and the position of servant can hardly be servile or menial with such an ill.u.s.trious American example, unless the master make it so. One woman, whose family had hired them both, testified to their lovable characters. Lincoln slept in the hay-loft during the period of his work, and he was noted for being remarkably considerate in "keeping his place," and for not coming in "where he was not wanted." It is said that he would lift his hat and bow when he entered the house, and that he was reliable, tender and kind, "like his sister." We wonder if his employers had only known of "the angel" they were "entertaining unawares," what would have been "his place" and where he would have been "wanted." Every such soul may, somewhere along the immortal way, be "an angel" "unaware" some time in the meaning of the great moral universe.

As showing the making of Lincoln's mind, one of his first attempts at essay writing was on the subject of "Cruelty to Animals" and another on "Temperance."

During his earliest acquaintance with the first lawyer he had known, he wrote a paper on "American Government," and he anxiously asked the lawyer to read it and pa.s.s an opinion on its merits. The lawyer did so, declaring that the "world couldn't beat it," and expressing the opinion that some day the people would "hear from that boy."

His repugnance toward acts of cruelty is shown by the first fist fight he ever had.

Some boys had caught a mud-turtle and were having great sport in putting a coal of fire on its back to see it open up its sh.e.l.l and run. Lincoln was then not as large as some of the tormentors of the poor animal, but, coming by and seeing what they were doing, he dashed in among them, knocked the firebrand from the boy's hand, and fought them all away from the turtle. Then he gave them a fierce scolding for their cruelty. With tears in his eyes he declared that the terrapin's life was as sweet to it as theirs was to them. His appeal was successful and there was freedom henceforth in that community for the American turtle.

II. HOW THE LINCOLN BOY MADE THE LINCOLN MAN

The American boy, seeing anything of great interest accomplished, wants to know how it was done. That is true all the way from winning some game at play to making a million in some great enterprise. But far more, in fact immeasurably more, is the making of a masterful mind, the development of a nation-making character, and of a world-historical man. Such was Abraham Lincoln, who was built up from what seems to be nothing on to the very highest worth of mankind. How did he do it? "If I only knew how," said a philosopher-mathematician, "I could turn the world over with a lever." "If I only knew how," said a philosopher-farmer, "I could make a three-year-old calf between now and next Christmas." In other words, the belief has always prevailed that by thought made into will anything can be accomplished, provided thinking perseveres in the right way for the right thing. Successful "might" always promotes the belief that it is right because it is successful, but the "successful" is no more than a temporary expedient toward coming failure, if it is not the righteousness of an immortal social system.

So let us see how Lincoln did it. It is not much of a mystery how he became a masterful man. There must be a beginning place, and, for such a person, it must be a divine beginning place. He had a loving mother and a home. It was the basis of his belief in humanity. The heart of the world he believed to be like the two n.o.ble-souled women who mothered his young heart and growing mind. He says himself that he didn't do it but that they did it. So, the first thing for a boy who wants to be a masterful man is to take the advice of Oliver Wendell Holmes to have the right kind of ancestors. At least, it seems quite necessary for him to choose a loving mother and it will be a lightened task for him to do the rest.

In 1823, while going to the Crawford school, there occurred an incident representing his invariable sense of honor. A buck's head was nailed to the wall and one day, probably experimenting as all boys do, he pulled too hard on one of the horns and broke it off. No one saw him and when the teacher inquired for the mischief maker Lincoln promptly told how it happened. The teacher believed him and said no more about it.

The first reprehensible thing known of the Lincoln boy was done soon after the death of his sister. She married at nineteen and died the next year. Lincoln believed, as most others believed, that she died of ill-treatment. There was no way to express his fierce resentment but in writing, and he wrote some scurrilous letters to the ones against whom he was so angry. Some biographers, in the supposed cause of history, have published some alleged copies of those letters, but at worst they merely show what a boy could do in the distress occasioned by what he believed to be the murder of his sister, whom we may believe was the one great love of his life after the death of his mother.

Being a good penman, Lincoln was often called on to write a line in copybooks. Among the proud possessors of a copybook so favored was Joe Richardson. In his book Lincoln wrote these commonplace, yet significant lines:

"Good boys who to their books apply Will all be great men by and by."

Lincoln was brought up in the midst of superst.i.tions that prevailed in every act of life, but they seem to have made no impression on him.

Many of the most estimable people believed the sun went round the earth, from the indisputable fact that in the morning it was on one side of the house and in the afternoon was on the other side. Many also believed the earth to be flat, because any one trying to go so far as to go around it would naturally become lost, travel in a circle, as all lost people do, and come back to the same place, thinking they had gone around the world.

People who argued otherwise were merely "stuck up" and "just proud to show themselves off." Doubtless, his belief about the sun and earth lost him his first love affair.

He was going to school to Andrew Crawford, who also taught good manners, when he began to exchange special attention with Miss Roby, a fine la.s.s of fifteen. He especially had her grat.i.tude for some help he gave her in a spelling cla.s.s. When she was about to spell "defied"

with a "y," he pointed to his eye, just in time to save her from disgrace with the teacher, and from losing her place in the cla.s.s.

But one day as they were walking along the road she made a remark that brought up an unfortunate subject.

"Abe," said she, "look yonder, the sun is going down."

"Reckon not," was the unfortunate reply. "It's us coming up. That's all."

"Don't you suppose I've got eyes," she answered indignantly.

"Reckon so," he replied, "but the sun's as still as a tree. When we're swung up so's the shine's cut off, we call it night."

"Abe," said she, "you're a consarned fool," and away she went, leaving him to the glory of his "stuck-up larnin'."

III. SOME SIGNS ALONG THE EARLY WAY

The Lincoln boy impressed all who knew him as being different from other boys, though they did not know just how. We now know that the difference consisted in his having a purpose to have a mind rather than to have a good time. And yet, Lincoln loved joyful sports and he was a favorite in all the social gatherings of the community. But his mind was not composed of sport experience, nor his interest in life inspired by sport success. The world-mind of books contained more value and richer promise than the turmoil of happenings among companions, or than those who were juggling interests in the hope of events.

Lincoln's books were very limited in number but exceedingly wide in their humanity. Weems' "Life of Washington" seems to have given him his ideal of American character and statesmanship, while the "Statutes of Indiana" aroused his interest in civil law and the American government.

When addressing the senate of the state of New Jersey, in 1861, Lincoln said, "May I be pardoned if, on this occasion, I mention that away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, such a one as few of the younger members have ever seen, 'Weems' Life of Washington.' I remember all the accounts there given of the battlefields and struggles for the liberties of the country, and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton, New Jersey. The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time, all fixed themselves in my mind more than any single revolutionary event; and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these early impressions last longer than others. I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that that thing shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made."

Lincoln told one of his friends that he read through every book he had ever heard of in his surroundings for a distance of fifty miles. The industry with which he sought to learn and his unceasing endeavor to build up his mind were marks of the genius that possessed him, the spirit that made him one of the strongest men of a world-wide work.

In the whole country round there was only one newspaper subscriber, and that was in Gentryville, Indiana, for a weekly paper from Louisville. Lincoln walked to town every week to see that paper and discuss the news. By the time he had become a man, in Menard County, Illinois, his neighbors went to him in order to know things, and he was a good custodian of the knowledge he had gained. His opinions coincided with common sense. So, common sense made him President of the United States, saved a United Nation, and gave Lincoln a never-dying place in the love and honor of mankind.

Lincoln walked six miles to borrow a grammar, and he studied it till he mastered the principles of the English language. Many another boy has thought that he had few troubles more unbearable than the study of composition, but many another boy has not been prepared to speak the world-stirring speech, such as was spoken by Lincoln at the dedication of the battlefield of Gettysburg.

IV. ILl.u.s.tRATIONS SHOWING THE MAKING OF A MAN

Lincoln, very early in life, believed that witnesses must tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Matilda Johnson, his stepsister, was very fond of him, and she often ran away from the house to be with him where he was at work. Lincoln would rather tell her stories than work, so the mother forbade the child from following him to work. But, one morning, she disobeyed and ran after him. She tried to surprise him by jumping up at his back, and catching him by the shoulders. In doing so the axe was swung around so that it severely cut her ankle. Matilda screamed with pain but Lincoln soon had the bleeding stopped and the wound bound. Then came the problem.