were scattered over its vast area were brave, hardy, adventurous, and sometimes terrible men. To the savages who roamed the forests they were indeed a terror and a constant threat. The Indians, irritated by the unceasing incoming of the whites, and vainly thinking that they could stem the tide that poured in upon them, were always at war with the intruders, and they omitted no opportunity to pick them off singly, or to drive them out by sudden and deadly attacks on small settlements.

Abraham Lincoln, grandfather of the President, entered four hundred acres of land on the south side of Licking Creek, under a government warrant. He built a log cabin near the military post known as Fort Beargrass, the site of the present city of Louisville, Kentucky. Here the family began to open their farm, breaking up the virgin soil and planting their first crops. In the second year of their Kentucky settlement, Abraham Lincoln and his son Thomas being at work in the field, a sneaking Indian waylaid the twain, and, firing from the brush, killed the father at his task. Mordecai and Josiah, the elder brothers, were chopping in the forest near at hand, and, while Josiah ran to the fort for help, Mordecai dashed into the cabin and seized the everready rifle. Looking through one of the port-holes cut in the logs, he saw the Indian, who, taking advantage of the flight of the boys, had seized little Tom, then only six years old, and was making off with him to the woods. Levelling his rifle, Mordecai shot and killed the Indian, and, as he dropped to the ground, the boy, liberated by the death of his would-be captor,

sprang to his feet and fled to the cabin, where the future father of the President was clasped in his mother's arms. Josiah speedily returned from the fort with a party of settlers, who took up the bodies of Abraham Lincoln and his slayer.

This scene, as may be imagined, made a deep impression on the minds of the three boys. It is said that Mordecai, standing over the form of his slain father, on the soil to be known for generations thereafter as "the dark and bloody ground," vowed that that precious life should be richly paid for in Indian blood. Certain it is that, from that time forth, Mordecai Lincoln was the mortal enemy of the red man, and many an Indian fell before his terrible rifle.

By this lamentable death, the widow of Abraham Lincoln was left alone to care for five childrenMordecai, Josiah, Thomas, Mary, and Nancy. Of their struggles and hardships we know nothing positively; but these can be imagined. Poverty oppressed the entire republic. In the wilderness of Kentucky there were few gleams of light: no schools, scanty means for acquiring even the art of reading and writing, and no apparent need of the higher branches of a common-school education. In the hard, rude life of the frontier, in ignorance and poverty, the father of the President grew to man's estate. In later years, his son Abraham, asked to tell what he knew of his father's life, said: "My father, at the time of the death of his father, was but six years old, and he grew up literally without education." He was a tall, well-built, and muscular man, quick with his rifle, an expert hunter, good-natured

and easy-going, but neither industrious nor enterprising. Unable to read until after his marriage, he invariably put on his lack of education all responsibility for his failures in life; and these were many. To his credit it should be said that he resolved that no child of his should ever be crippled as he had been for lack of knowledge of the commonest rudiments of learning.

While yet a lad, he hired himself to his uncle, Isaac Lincoln, then living on a claim that he had taken on Watauga Creek, a branch of the Holston River. Manual labor filled the years of Tom's young manhood. Felling forests, breaking up the soil, building the rude cabins of the time, and rearing the crops needed for the sustenance of the hardy settlers and their broods-these were the occupations of those years. The woods were thickly tenanted by bears, deer, catamounts, and other wild creatures, and so far as hunting was a diversion from toil, this amusement was ready in abundance. But hunting was necessary for procuring meat for the table and furs and skins for clothing and for barter with distant trading-posts. Thomas Lincoln was a laboring man, working for others, and compelled to take for wages whatever he could get in a region where every man wrought with his own hands and few hired from others.

Thomas Lincoln was married, in 1806, to Nancy Hanks, formerly of Virginia. The young bride was taken by her husband to a rude log cabin that he had built for himself near Nolin Creek, in what is now Larue County, Kentucky. The region was well

covered with timber, and, where cleared and planted, bore good harvests. It was a picturesque and rolling country, and some of the hills rise to the dignity of mountains. One of these is called Shiny Mountain and another is known as Blue Ball. Here and there were clearings, and smiling fields were gradually taking the place of pathless woods.

In this cabin, February 12, 1809, was born Abraham Lincoln, who was to be the 16th President of the United States. While he was yet an infant, the family removed to another log cabin, not far distant, and in these two homes Abraham Lincoln spent the first seven years of his life. One sister, Sarah, was a year older than he; and one brother, Thomas, two years younger, died in infancy. Mrs. Lincoln was described by her son Abraham as of medium stature, dark, with soft and rather mirthful eyes. She was a woman of great force of character and passionately fond of reading. Every book on which she could lay hands was eagerly read, and her son said, years afterwards, that his earliest recollection of his mother was of his sitting at her feet with his sister, drinking in the tales and legends that were read or related to them by the house-mother.

Theirs was a very humble and even povertystricken home. The mother was used to the rifle, and not only did she bring down the bear, or deer, and dress its flesh for the family table, but her skilful hand wrought garments and moccasins and headgear from the skins. The most vivid impression that we have of the mother of Abraham Lincoln is one of sadness, toil, and unremitting anxiety. That was a

hard life for a sensitive and slender woman which was led by the mother of the President. The country was very poor in all that makes life easy. The little family was far from any considerable settlement. Father and mother were alike religious and resolved to bring up their children in the fear of God; but places of worship, schools, and all the means of even a common education were not near at hand. Mrs. Lincoln taught her two children their first lessons in the alphabet and spelling. When Abraham was in his seventh year, Zachariah Riney came into the vicinity and the lad was sent to his school. Riney was a Catholic, and the Protestant children that attended his humble school were withdrawn from the little log schoolhouse whenever any religious exercises were held. In later years, Lincoln spoke of this his first schoolmaster with respect and esteem, although Riney did not long continue to teach the future President. Later on, Caleb Hazel, a spirited and manly young fellow, succeeded Riney as teacher, and Abraham attended his school three months. So rare were opportunities for going to school in those days, that Lincoln never forgot the lessons he learned of Caleb Hazel and the pleasure that he felt in that great event of his life—going to school.

In those primitive times, preaching was usually had under the trees or in the cabins of those few who were so fortunate as to have a bigger roof than most of their neighbors. Lincoln was a full-grown lad when he first saw a church, and it was only from the lips of wandering preachers, devoted men of God,