heard his father tell the story of his own desperate boyhood, how Mordecai, the elder brother, had, just in the nick of time, saved his life from the tomahawk.

Abe’s father when a child went out to their clearing with his two brothers and their father, whose name was Abraham. We may be sure that their watchful eyes looked closely into every pile of brush or clump of bushes that might hide an Indian. But the Indians were trained to hide like snakes or foxes. So that which was ever expected and feared happened. There was a shot from an unseen form in the bushes, and the father of the family fell dead.

Mordecai, the eldest, ran for the cabin, the other boy ran for help, but the younger boy, too bewildered and not comprehending what had happened, remained by the side of his fallen father.

As Mordecai looked out through the chinks of the cabin to see the enemy, which he supposed to be in numbers, he saw a lone Indian come out and seize the boy. With quick aim he fired and the Indian fell dead. The little boy, now understanding, began to scream, when Mordecai ran to him and carried him into the cabin.

It was in the death of this pioneer that the Lincolns became subjected to such poverty. And yet it is doubtful if their poverty was much worse than most of those around them. In this vision of frontier life we can get some idea at what great cost has been achieved the civilization that composes the foundations of this country.

Lives seem insignificant and their experiences trivial, but in them are the making of all that is good and great. In the making of typical lives is to be seen the meaning and the making of the nation. It is said that Lincoln’s first attempts to write his name were made with a stick upon the ground. Those letters have long since vanished and yet that name is written in sentiments and deeds of gold throughout the earth.

Wilbur Nesbit holds up the jewel of Lincoln’s life in the following lines:

III. HOME-SEEKERS IN THE WILD WEST

Thomas Lincoln became a home-seeking wanderer soon after the death of his father. According to the laws of that time, all the property went to the eldest, and it may be supposed that little attention was paid in that rough destitute life to the raising of Thomas. He grew up simply “a wandering, laboring boy,” whose hard circumstances left little ambition or hope in him. But, in the course of all wondrous events and time, he became a carpenter, well respected, and married his cousin, the niece of the man in whose shop he worked. This niece was Nancy Hanks, daughter of Joseph Hanks, who had married Nannie Shipley, a Quaker girl. From all authentic accounts that can be gathered concerning Nancy Hanks, she was one of God’s great women.

This much at least is sufficiently verified that she was a strong, handsome girl, noted for her religious zeal, and was one of the most sought-for singers at the marvellous camp-meetings of those days. That the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks was regarded as an important community event is the testimony of several who were present, for every social enjoyment known to the times was there, and the occasion was celebrated with unusual demonstrations of good will.

The wedding took place June 12, 1806, and the documents of the marriage show that she had enough property left her by her father to require a guardian appointed by the court. The uncle with whom she lived was her guardian, appointed on the death of her parents when she was nine years old.

Documents in existence also show that Thomas Lincoln owned a large tract of land, that he held responsible public position, and was well respected in his community. The stories of shiftlessness and shame so long told as truth must be cast out as among the curiosities of envious gossip, sometimes accepted even by those it injures as true history.

A year after the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks their first child was born, a girl, which they named Nancy. Twelve years later, after the death of her mother and the marriage of her father to Sarah Bush Johnson, this daughter renamed herself Sarah, by which name she was known until her death at the age of twenty.

Sarah was born at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, but soon after the family moved to a farm, bought several years before by Thomas Lincoln, about fourteen miles away. There on February 12, 1809, was born one of the greatest of all Americans, Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln home was so rude that descriptions of it, in comparison with present poverty-stricken homes, sounds like distressful destitution, but it was the home of frontiersmen in pioneer days. All testimony agrees that no one suffered and that the boy grew strong and manly, in the abiding favor of friends, and in the noble aspirations of a superior destiny.

When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old and his sister Sarah was near nine, his father desired to seek a better home, which the pioneer always dreamed of as farther on. He built a flatboat in a creek half a mile from his house, put his household goods upon it, and floated down the Rolling Fork on a voyage of discovery to Salt River, and down Salt River to the Ohio. At Thompson’s Ferry on the Indiana shore he landed, stored his goods, and went back after his family, which he brought through on horseback.

IV. A WONDERFUL FAMILY IN THE DESOLATE WILDERNESS

Lincoln tells us of one thing his mother said to him which he never forgot, though he was not yet nine years old. Her thought for him became his dream of her.

“Mother wants her little boy to be honest, truthful, and kind to everybody, and always to trust in God.”

The words of his “angel mother,” as he named her, were always the guiding star of his life. He always wanted to be what his mother said was her desire for him to be. He often said, “All I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother,” and yet, as a poet has said it, that mother

An epidemic carried away Lincoln’s mother in 1818 when he was nine years of age. It was the beginning of that great man’s acquaintance with grief, but the impression she had made on him never forsook him. Her last words to the surrounding friends were, “I pray you to love your kindred and worship God.”

When Elizabeth Barrett Browning asked Charles Kingsley for the secret of his splendid life, he answered, “I once had a friend.” So it was with Lincoln. He once had a friend, and he always spoke of her as his “angel mother.”

So deeply had she impressed the nine-year-old boy with her religious faith that he could never be satisfied until he induced a preacher to preach a sermon and offer a prayer over her grave.

In that profoundly earnest incident of sympathy is to be seen the love that leavened his life to the making of a man nobler than kings among men.

Of these early years Lincoln spoke but little, and the gossip of old people, who