The gallant four-horse team was the property of Ralph Krume, who had married Sally Johnston's sister; and in the wagon was stored what seemed to these children of the wilderness a gorgeous array of housekeeping things. There were tables and chairs, a bureau with real drawers that pulled out and disclosed a stock of clothing, crockery to replace the rude tins that were used in the Lincoln homestead, bedding, knives and forks, and numerous things that to people nowadays are thought to be among the necessaries of life, but which Nancy Lincoln had been compelled to do without. By what magic Thomas Lincoln had persuaded this thrifty and "forehanded" widow to leave her home in Kentucky, and migrate to the comfortless wilderness of Indiana, we can only guess. But Thomas was of a genial and even jovial disposition, and he had allured the good woman to come and save his motherless bairns from utter destitution and neglect.

The new Mrs. Lincoln, if she was disappointed in the home she found in Indiana, never showed her disappointment to her step-children. She took hold of the duties and labors of the day with a cheerful readiness that was long and gratefully remembered by her step-son, at least. They were good friends at once. Of him she said, years after: "He never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested of him." Of her he said: "She was a noble woman, affectionate, good, and kind, rather above the average woman, as I remember women in those days." Mrs. Lincoln brought with her three children by her first

marriage, John, Sarah, and Matilda Johnston, whose ages were not far from those of the three children found in the Lincoln homestead. The log cabin was full to overflowing. The three boys, Abraham Lincoln, John Johnston, and Dennis Hanks, were sent to the loft over the cabin to sleep. They climbed up a rude ladder built against the inner side of the log house; and their bed, a mere sack of dry cornhusks, was so narrow that when one turned over all three turned. Nevertheless, there was an abundance of covering for the children, all. The new mother had at once insisted that the openings in the cabin should be filled with glass and sashes instead of loosely hung sheets of muslin. The rickety frame covered with split shakes, that had served as a door, with its clumsy wooden hasp, was taken away, and "a battened door" of matched boards, with a wooden latch of domestic make, replaced it. Mats of deerskin were put down on the puncheon floor, and an aspect of comfort, even luxury, was spread around. It seems to have been an harmonious household. If there were any family jars, history makes no mention of them. And we must remember that that history has come down to us in the reports of two of those who were most interested in the householdAbraham Lincoln and his step-mother.

About this time young Abe made the acquaintance of a new source of pleasure, James Fenimore Cooper's Leather-Stocking Tales, then novelties in the literature of the United States. Over these he hung with rapturous delight. He had seen something of the fast-receding Indian of the American forests; and

he had heard, many a time, of his father's thrilling escape from the red man's clutches, and of his grandfather's cruel death in the Kentucky "clearing"; and when he withdrew his fascinated attention from the vivid pages of Cooper's novel, he almost expected to see the painted savages lurking in the outskirts of the forest so near at hand. Another book, borrowed from one of the few and distant neighbors, was Burns's Poems, a thick and chunky volume, as he afterwards described it, bound in leather and printed in very small type. This book he kept long enough to commit to memory almost all its contents. And ever after, to the day of his death, some of the familiar lines of the Scottish poet were as ready on his lips as those of Shakespeare, the only poet who was, in Lincoln's opinion, greater than Robert Burns.

His step-mother said of him: "He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards, if he had no paper, and keep it by him until he could get paper. Then he would copy it, look at it, commit it to memory, and repeat it.” In this way he collected a great many things from books that he did not own and could not keep. We have heard of writers and scholars who make a commonplace book in which may be recorded things noteworthy and memorable. Abraham Lincoln, at the age of ten, kept such a book. It was first written on wooden "shakes" with charcoal. Transferred to paper with pen and ink, and repeated often, the noble thoughts and melodious lines of famous

men had already become a part of the education of the President that was to be.

But although young Lincoln devoured books with a hunger that was almost pathetic, and sorely tried his eyes with study by the light of blazing pineknots on the hearth, he was no milksop, no weakly bookworm. In the athletic sports of the time, and in the manual dexterity so helpful in those frontier pursuits, he was the master of every other boy of his age. He had learned the use of tools, could swing the maul and chip out "shakes" and shingles, lay open rails and handle logs as well as most men. Although not a quarrelsome boy, he could "throw' any of his weight and years in the neighborhood, and far and near "Abe Lincoln" was early known as a capital wrestler and a tough champion at every game of muscular skill.

School and its coveted facilities for getting knowledge was now within reach. Hazel Dorsey was the name of a new schoolmaster on Little Pigeon Creek, a mile and a half from the Lincoln homestead; and thither was sent the brood of young ones belonging to the Lincoln family. These backwoods children had the unusual luxury of going all together to a genuine school. True the schoolhouse was built of logs; but all the youngsters of the school came from log cabins; and even the new meeting-house, which was an imposing affair for those woods, was log-built up to the gables, and thence finished out with the first sawn lumber ever used to any considerable extent in the region.

Young Abraham made the most of his opportu

nities, and, when he found the days too short for his school studies and his tasks about the farm, he sat up by the fire of "lightwood" late into the night. What dreams had come to him in those far-off days? Did he begin to think that he might "be somebody" in the great and busy world of which he had heard faint echoes? It would seem likely. Following the plow, or whirling the mighty maul, as he wrought at splitting rails, he pondered deeply the lessons that he had learned at school and from the few books at his command. When he was a grown man, it fell to his lot to pronounce a eulogy on Henry Clay, whom he had learned to idolize in his youth; and the growing young statesman said of Clay, among other things: "His example teaches us that one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably." If the example of Abraham Lincoln, the admirer and eulogist of Henry Clay, teaches anything to the boys of this generation, it teaches just what he said of Henry Clay's life. As his mental vision widened, there was nothing too abstruse for Lincoln to grapple with, nothing so far out of the knowledge of those about him that he could not take Algebra, Euclid, Latin, came later on in life; but even in his early youth, hearing of these, he resolved to master them as soon as he could get the needed books.

it up.

Through all the wide neighborhood, Abe Lincoln was known as an honest, laborious, and helpful lad. Coming home one night, when the early winter frosts were sharp and nipping, he and a comrade found by