The Wonderful Story of Lincoln Part 3

"Tilda," he exclaimed, "I am astonished at you. How could you disobey your mother? Now, what are you going to tell her?"

"I'll tell her I did it with the axe," she said in the midst of her crying. "That will be the truth, won't it?"

"Yes," replied the boy, "that's the truth as far as it goes, but it is not all of the truth. You tell the whole truth and trust your mother for the rest."

Tilda went home limping and weeping with the whole truth, and the good mother thought she had been punished enough.

The self-possessed way in which Lincoln conducted himself is well ill.u.s.trated in his experience with the boaster who was telling of his horse-race, and especially endeavoring to impress his story upon the youthful Lincoln.

Uncle Jimmy Larkins, the boastful owner of the fast horse, was much of a hero in the eyes of a small boy who grew up to be Captain John Lamar, the man who tells the story.

Lincoln paid no attention to the boasting. Uncle Jimmy did not like this and the Lamar boy thought it very rude in Lincoln. Finally Uncle Jimmy said, "Abe, I've got the best horse in the world: he won that race and never drew a long breath."

But Abe still paid no attention. Uncle Jimmy didn't like it some more and the Lamar boy was disgusted that Lincoln did not give due respect for something so important.

"I say, Abe," repeated Uncle Jimmy emphatically, "I have the best horse in the world; after all that running he never drew a long breath."

Then Abe had to say something, so he said, "Well, Uncle Jimmy, why don't you tell us how many short breaths he took."

"Everybody laughed and Uncle Jimmy got all-fired hot," says Captain Lamar. "He spoke something about fighting Abe, and Abe said, 'If you don't shut up, I'll throw you into the pond,' and Uncle Jimmy shut up."

Captain Lamar, in concluding his comments, said, "I was very much hurt at the way my hero was treated, but I have lived to change my ideas about heroes."

V. LINCOLN'S FIRST DOLLAR

Lincoln enjoyed the commonplace interests of ordinary life, and much that we know of him is from conversations with friends over the early lessons of his youth.

One day while he was president, as he was talking with Secretary Seward over weighty affairs of state, he suddenly broke from the subject they were discussing and said, "Seward, do you know how I earned my first dollar?"

The well-to-do and rather aristocratic Secretary of State replied that he did not know.

"It was this way," Lincoln continued. "I was about eighteen years of age and had succeeded in raising enough produce to justify a trip down the Ohio to the markets at New Orleans. I made a flatboat big enough to hold the barrels containing our things and was soon ready for loading up and starting on our journey.

"There were few landing places for steamers, and, where pa.s.sengers desired to get on to one of the pa.s.sing boats, they had to be taken out into the river in order to get aboard.

"While I was looking my boat over to see if anything more could be done to strengthen it, two men came down to the sh.o.r.e in a carriage, with their trunks, for the purpose of boarding a pa.s.sing steamer. They looked the boats over and came down to me.

"'Who owns this boat?' they asked.

"I very proudly answered, 'I do.'

"'Will you take us and our trunks out to the steamer?'

"I was glad for a chance to earn something and I soon had them and their trunks loaded into my boat. I soon sculled them out to the steamer. They climbed aboard and I lifted their trunks on deck. I expected them to hand me a couple of bits for my work, but both seemed to have forgotten their dues to me. The steamer was about to start, when I called out to them, 'You have forgotten to pay me.'

"Each took a silver half-dollar and threw it over into the bottom of my boat. I could scarcely believe my good fortune. That seems like a little thing but it was one of the most important incidents in my life. I could hardly believe that I had been able to earn, by my own work, a dollar in less than a day. I now knew that such things could be done. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time."

Lincoln received eight dollars a month for his trip down the Ohio and Mississippi from Indiana, but he probably got much priceless value out of it in the broader view of life it gave him. He had already prepared himself to think on what he saw, and, from all attainable evidence from every side, to reach reasonable and justified conclusions.

This voyage was comparatively uneventful except that one night, after the little boat crew of three men had sold their goods, they were attacked by seven negroes, who came aboard intending to kill and rob them. But, after a lively fight, the a.s.sailants were driven off and the boat was swung out into the river.

One cannot help thinking about what a difference it would have made to the negro race if those negroes had killed the man whom destiny had then started on the way to make their people free.

VI. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUPERIOR MIND

The boy who reads the story of Lincoln, desiring to get real help in building his life, will find no miracle nor any short-cuts to get easily the ambitions of life. Lincoln did not know the office he wanted to hold, but he knew the kind of man he wanted to be and he worked unceasingly to reach that ideal of mind and manhood. In proportion, it is no harder now to know more than others, in order to be correspondingly useful to others, than it was in Lincoln's time.

Lincoln said that he went to school by "littles" altogether not more than a year, but no one ever thinks of him as anything less than a learned man. All records show that he was intellectually at home in company with any worldly-wise men. It was in the prudent selection of interests n.o.bly directed in honorable ways that gave him world-wisdom from the most limited supply, while now the multiplication of great books has made the diffusion of knowledge almost unlimited for anyone who seeks to be worth while. But it was in his high moral nature where was to be found the secret of his unwavering progress. Numerous characteristic incidents ill.u.s.trate how little he was disturbed by the ill-nature of others.

That Lincoln was above "holding spite" or "bearing a grudge" is shown in his experience with the noted Kentucky lawyer, John Breckenridge.

There had been a murder at Boonville, Indiana, and Lincoln went to hear the speech made to the jury by the defense. He had never before heard a learned and eloquent man. The powerful plea of the silver-tongued John Breckenridge went through the sensitive soul of Lincoln like heavenly music. Forgetting his backwoodsman appearance, he rushed forward with others at the close of the speech to express his admiration.

Breckenridge was a "gentleman" of the South, not used to being familiarly addressed by anyone having the appearance of being "poor white trash." He gazed in insulted amazement at the presumptuous youth and strode indignantly away.

This was probably the first knowledge Lincoln had of the artificial social barriers set up by men developing antagonizing cla.s.ses. Here he first met the great problem of the ages in a land where all are born free and equal before life and law. It was a social partisanship not only contrary to common sense and moral law, but in violation of the Declaration of Independence, the Const.i.tution of the United States, and the entire meaning of America. This is the great significance of Lincoln, that his life so unmistakably refuted so many un-American ideas of society and civilization.

In 1862 this same Breckenridge, now an humble pet.i.tioner for presidential favors, was introduced to President Lincoln, who then completed his expression of admiration for the excellent speech made by Mr. Breckenridge in the Indiana murder case. The able lawyer was indeed dumbfounded and it gave him a new vision of Lincoln, if not of the relationship of men. That equality of mind and opportunity which Lincoln represented was the master meaning of America, disclosing that in its freedom there is opportunity for the poorest to become the greatest through human values the most lasting and worthwhile.

Lincoln could have satisfied a righteous resentment against such haughty treatment toward the poor as was shown by Breckenridge to him at Boonville, and he could have given a deserved rebuke to pride in a land where pride of that kind is unpatriotic as well as immoral, but Lincoln chose the better part. It reminds us of the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Lincoln's heart was as large as the world, but nowhere had any room for the memory of a wrong."

CHAPTER IV

I. THE WILDERNESS AS THE GARDEN OF POLITICAL LIBERTY

The pioneer and frontiersman of early America are very strange beings when viewed from our present social customs, or as studied from the so-called refinements of modern interests and conveniences, but, no doubt, the problem is now before us, which shall be the makers of America, the pioneer view of freedom and right, or influence from the present methods of material distinctions and individual success. We may be sure that whichever one of these ideas gets first to the heart of the American boy, that is the ideal that will make of him the resulting man. The American boy loves to go to the bottom of things and so the submarine idea of interests is full of fancies. He likes to get to the top of things and the airship carries him away on the wings of adventure. But this all is merely because he likes freedom and conquest. There is a limit to the submarine and the airship, as there is to all machinery ideals, but there was no limit to the frontiersman and the pioneer. The boy wants no limit, and there is the same opening now to be a frontiersman and a pioneer in human values as there ever was, provided they are human values and not individual aggrandizement. The only consideration is that the scenes have changed and the obstacles known as "things in the way" are different.

The pioneer and the frontiersman were laboring to achieve something far more important than clearing away trees, killing wildcats or subduing the wild men of the wilderness. Such dangerous and exciting work was but an incident in the great struggle. They were striving for a safe, free and sufficient living for family and home. But far greater than the economic interest was the ideal interest of freedom from the will of overlords. That sublime goal of human endeavor is probably no nearer the heart's desire now than it was then. Society is not yet out of the wilderness of wildcat schemers and wild men monopolists.

The American boy has an immeasurably greater opportunity to continue the heroic and patriotic work of the frontiersman and pioneer. The safety, freedom and sufficiency of America is merely well started on its second period. The first great epoch of American humanity became symbolized in the life of Washington and the second in the life of Lincoln. If there is a third great symbolic character, it is yet to come. The American boy must feel the meaning combined in Washington and Lincoln if he is to be a pioneer civilizing, socially and politically, the frontier of America for a n.o.bler world.

II. SMALL BEGINNINGS IN PUBLIC ESTEEM

The wilderness family was humble as its needs. It was as least as good as its neighbors. One thing we should appreciate as significant, in the dest.i.tution of the times, the Lincoln family was adventurous and enterprising until it arrived for final settlement in the richest soil-regions of the Mississippi valley, and the freest mind-regions of political America.

In the spring of 1830, on account of ill health in the neighborhood, Lincoln's father decided to move from the unpromising forests of Indiana to the fertile prairies of Illinois. Friends and relatives had already preceded him, and had sent back glowing accounts of the prairie lands. When the family arrived in Illinois, Lincoln was probably as near dest.i.tute as ever in his life, and he entered into a contract "to split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut bark that would make a pair of trousers."

Lincoln was now past twenty-one, and, it may be said, not until his arrival at New Salem had he found firm ground on which to begin building to some plan of life. Undoubtedly, his vision of the future was one of very vague dreams. That he was adventurous and looked beyond his community for the fulfillment of his fortunes is shown in his effort at commercial enterprise with nothing as his capital. He now arranged to take a second raft of home goods to New Orleans. Such a venture required no small amount of courage and self-reliance.

Wide observation with suitable thinking seems to give one prudence and steadiness of mind in emergencies. In several trying instances this proved to be true in Lincoln's experience, long before the civilization of America was depending upon his warm heart and clear head. Many such instances seem as trivial as the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of a sapling, but they are the perfecting process that makes possible the great oak.