by Ida M.Tatell MIS STRUGGLES AND $ eJOVS IN INDIANA,WiiERE if : : . lib ..... jiiiB , 7 c t i - ST IDA M. TAr.BKI.U IN 1M6. When he was 7, a great event happened to the little boy. Abraham Lincoln. His fatt er rmigrnted to In diana. "This removal was partly on ac count of slavery, hut chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Ken tucky." says his son. It may be tha4 Thomas Lincoln was tempted into In diana by the reports of his brother Josiah. who had already settled on the Big Blue River of that state. At all events. In the Fall of 1S1. he started with wife and children and household stores- to journey by horseback and by wagon to a farm selected on a previous trip be had made. This farm, located near Little Piet-on Creek, about 15 miles north of the Ohio River, and a mile and a half east of Gentryville, Spencer Coun ty, was in a forest so dense that the road for the travelers had to be hewed out as they went. To a boy of 7 years, free from all re sponsibility, and too vigorous to feel its hardships, such a journey must have been "a panorama of delightful novelty." Life suddenly ceased its routine, and every day brought forth new and strange scenes and adventure. Little Abraham saw forests gTeater than he had ever dreamed of. peopled by strange new birds and beasts, and he crossed a river so wide that it must have seemed to him like the sea. To Thomas and Nancy Lincoln the journey was probably a hard and sod one: but to the children beside them it was a wonderful voyage into the un known. Abraham Helps to Build His Home. On arriving at the new farm an axe was put into the boy's hands, and he was net to work to help build the "half-face , caxtp." which for a year was the home of ' the Lincolns. and to aid in clearing a field for corn. There were few more primitive homes in the wilderness of In diana in 1818 than this of young Lin- coin s, and there were few families, even in that day. who were forced to prac tice more makeshifts to get a living. The cabin which took the place of the "half face camp" had but one room, with a loft above. For a long time there was no window, door, or floor: not even the tra ditional deer-ekin hung before the exit, nor the oiled paper over the opening for lieht. nor the puncheon covering on the ground on which they trod. The furniture was palnfuUy primitive. Their bedstead, or. rather, bed frame, was ftiU made of poles held up by two outer posts, and the ends made firm by insert ing the poles in augur-holes that bad been bored in a log which was a Part of the wall of the cabin: skins were its chief covering. Little Abraham was not so well off as this even, his bed being a heap of drv leaves in the corner of the loft, to which he mounted by means of pegs driven into the wall. The table and chairs were of the rudest sort rough Flabs of wood In which holes were bored and legs fitted in. The food, if coarse, was usually abun dant, though sometimes the variety was j.ainfully small. Of game there was plenty deer, bcar' Peasants- wild tur" keys. duck, birds of all kinds. There were fish In the streams, and wild fruits of many kinds In the woods in the Sum mer and r these were dried for Winter vso; but the difficulty of raising and milling corn and wheat was very great. -Corn dodger" was the every-day bread of the Lincoln household, the wheat cake being a reserved dainty for Sunday mornings. Potatoes Only for Dinner. Potatoes were the only "vegetables raised in any quantity, and there were times in the Lincoln family when they were the only food on the table; a fact j.rowd to prosterlty by the oft-repeated remark of, Abraham to his father after the latter had asked a bk-ssiag over a dish of roasted potatoes that they were mighty poor blessings." Not only were potatoes all the Lincolns had for din ner sometimes, t; ..- were all tney had on occasions to offer guests: for one of their neighbors' tells of calling there once when raw potatoes, pared and washed, were passed around and eaten as apples. Abraham wore little cotton or linsey woolsey. His trousers were of roughly tanned deer-skin, his foot covering a home-made moccasin, his cap a coon ekin, hia coat a bl- of linsey-woolsey. These "pretty pinching times," as Ab raham Lincoln once described the early days in Indiana, lasted until 1S19. The year before, Nancy Lincoln had died, and for many months no more forlorn place could bo conceived than the bereft household: but finally Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and returned with a new wife Sally Bush Johnston, a widow with three children, John, Sarah and Matilda. The new mother came well provided with household furniture things unheard of before by little Abraham "one line bureau, owe table, one set of chairs, one large clothes-chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bedding, and other articles." She at once made the cabin habitable and taught the children habits of cleanliness and comfort. By this time Abraham had become an Important member of the family. He was remarkably strong for his years, and Ire work ho couid do In a day was a de cided advantage to Thomas Lincoln. The x which had been put into his hand to help in making the first clearing, he had never been allowed to drop; indeed, as he tavs himself, "from that till within Mr 23d year he was almost con stantly handling that most useful instru ment." Besides, he drove the team, cut t Via elm fi nA linn brush with which Jho-stock as -often, fed, -learned lo-han- .ito:. - . i I . 3 . I w ppji1 f ' rrNrcoT-ifsrv INIIajSC!oL HOME , TO.BUILD.. die the old shovel plow, to wield the sickle, to thresh the wheat with a flail, to fan and clean it with a sheet, to ga to mill and turn the hard-earned grist into flour; in short, he learned all the trades the settler s boy must know, and well enough so that when his father did not need him he could hire to the neigh bors. Thomas Lincoln also taught him the rudiments of carpentry and. cabinet making, and kept him buBy some of the time as his assistant In his trade. There are houses still standing, in and near Gentryville. on which it is said he worked Hired Boy t Two Bits a Day. As he grew older he became one of the strongest and most popular '."hands" in the vicinity, and much of his time was spent as a "hired boy" on some neighbor's farm. For 25 cens a day paid to his father he was hostler, plow man, woodchopper and carpenter, besides helping the women with the "chores." For them, so say the legends, he was ready to -carry water, make the fire, even tend the baby. No wonder that a laborer who never-refused to do anything asked of him, who could "strike with a mallet heavier blows" and "sink an ax deeper into the wood" than anybody else in the community, and who at the same time was general help for the women, never lacked for a Job In Gentryville. In VS!B he added to his other accom plishments that of ferryman, being em ployed for some nine months at the mouth of Anderson Creek, where it joins the Ohio. This experience opened new possibilities to him, and he became am bitious to try the river as a boatman. It was a custom among the farmers of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois at this date to collect a quantity of produce, build a raft, and float down to New Orleans to sell it. Young Lincoln saw this, and wanted to try his fortune as a produce merchant. An incident of his projected trip he related once to Mr. Seward: How Lincoln Earned His First Dollar. "Seward," he said, "you never heard, did you, how I earned my first dollar?" "No," said Mr. Seward. "Well," replied he, "I was about' J! years of age and belonged, as you kno n, to what they call down South the 'scrubs', people who do not own land and slaves are nobody there; but we had succeeded In raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to evil. After much persuasion I had got the consent of my mother to go, and had constructed a flat boat large enough to take the few barrels of things we had gathered down to New Orleans. A steamer was going down the river. We have, you know, no wharves on the Western streams, and the custom was, if passengers were at any of the land ings, they were to go out in a boat, the steamer stopping and taking them on board. I was contemplating my new boat and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any part, when two men with trunks came down to the shore In carriages, and, looking at the different boats, singled out mine, end asked: 'Who owns this?' I answered modest, 'I do." 'Will you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks out to the steamer?" "Certainly,' said I I was very glad to have the chance of earning something, and supposed that each of them would give me a couple of bits. The trunks were put in my boat, the passengera seated themselves on them and I sculled them out to the steamer. They got on board and I lift ed the trunks and put them on the deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out, 'You have for gotten to pay nie.' Each of them took from his- pocket a silver half-dollar and threw it on the bottom of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most Important incident in my life. I could Scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed wider and fairer -before me. I was a more hope ful and thoughtful boy from that time." Soon after this, while he was working for Mr. Gentry, the leading citizen of Gentryville, his employer decided to send, his son to New Orleans with a load of produce, and chose young Lincoln to go as "bow-handi" "to work the front oars." For this trip he received J8 a month and his passage back as- a deck passenger on a steamer. Straggling for an Education. With all this hard living and hard work Lincoln was getting In this period a desultory kind of education. Not tfiat he received much schooling. He went "by littles." he says; "in all It did not amount to more than a year." But more or less of the schoolroom is a matter of small importance if a boy had learned to rad and to think of what he reads. And that this boy had learned. His stock of books was email, but he knew them Jxhmoiishljv-said: icy wero good books to 4 i i tburizL - i it ii i ii At ir.i" III Wl villi J WW. V i x Hf XXNCOUNT WHILE lOivnsrG- est xcsTdxnc , rr ig ere' walnut.abou'i 3TWO TEET.HKH. know: The Bible, Esop's "Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." a "History of the United States." Weem's "Life of Washington." and the "Statutes of Indiana." These are the chief ones we know about. He did not own them all. but sometimes had to borrow them from the neighbors, a prac tice which resulted in at least one cas ualty, for Weem'a "Life of Washington" he allowed to get wet. and to make good the loss he had to pull fodder three days. No matter. The book became his then, and he could read it as he would. Fortunately he took this curious work in profound seriousness, which a wide awake boy would hardly be expected to do today. Washington became the ex alted figure in his imagination, and he always contended later, when the ques tion of the real character of the first President was brought up, that It wan wiser to regard uim as a godlike char acter, heroic in nature and deeds, as Weems did. than to contend that he was only a man who; if wise and good, still made mistakes and indulged in follies like other men. In addressing the Senate of the State of New Jersey, he said: "May I be pardoned if, upon this occa sion. 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 mem bers have ever seen Weem's 'Life of Washington." I remember all the accounts there given of the battlefields and strug gles for the liberties of the country, and none fixed themselves upon my imagina tion so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton, New Jersey. The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the gTeat hardships endured at that time, all fixed themselves on my mem ory more than any single Revolutionary event; and you all know-, for you have all been boys, how these early impres sions last longer than any others. I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been some thing more than common that these men struggled for." Besides these books he borrowed many. He once told a friend that he "read" through every book he had ever heard of in that country, for a circuit of 50 miles. From everything he read he made long extracts, using a turkey-buzzard pen and brier-root ink. When he had no paper he would write on a board, and thus preserve his selections until he secured a copy-book. The wooden fire-shovel was his usual slate, and on its back he would cipher with a charred stick, shaving it off when cov ered. The logs and boards in his vicin ity were always filled with his figures (This tribute appeared in the London Punch, which, up to the time of the -assassination of Mr. Lincoln, had ridi culed and maligned him with all Its well-known powers of pen and pencil.) You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, l"ou, who with mocking pencil wont to trace Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face. His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair. His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease. His lack of all we prize as debonair. Of power or will to shine, of art to please; Tou. whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though the way were plain. Reckless, so it could point its paragraph Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain: Besides this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew. Between the mourners at his head and feet, ' Say, scurrlle jester, is there room for you? Yes; he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen; To make me own this hind of Princes peer. This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. My shallow Judgment I had learned to rue, Noting how to occasion's height he rose; How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more truoj How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows. How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be; How, in good fortune and in ill, the same; Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he. Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. He went about his work. such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand, As one who knows, where there's a task to do, Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command; Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That God makes Instruments to work his will. If but that w ill we can arrive to know. Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. If 4 r 7, M I 1 THE OLD SWIMMING;, iTOXJS NEAB -LINCOLN IMDiAJSCA. HOME WHEKE J-INO J3 1 4A(V ft. TIME FiiOTOOOeAFTlIC and quotations. By night he read and worked as longf as there was light, and he kept a book in the crack of the logs in his loft, to have it at hand at peep of day. In his habits of reading and study the boy had little encouragement from his father, but his step-mother did all she could for him. Indeed, between the two there soon grew up a relation 1 Ylte ABRAHAM LINCOLN Foully Assassinated April 14. 1865 So he went forth to battle, on the side That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, As in his peasant boyhood he had plied His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights. The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil, The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks. The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear, Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train; Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. So he grew up, a destined work to do. And lived to do it; four long-suffering years. Ill-fate, ill-feeling, Ill-report, lived through, And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise. And took both with the same unwavering mood; . Till, as he came on light, from darkling days. And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, A felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest. And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim. Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest! The words of mercy were upon his lips. Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men. The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, Utter one voice of sympathy and shame; Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high; Sad life, cut short just as Its triumph came! A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt If more of horror or disgrace they bore; But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; And with the martyr's crown crownest a life With much to praise, little to -be forgiven. Tom Taylor. CI x i t o. IS. mi- OIBOUB . of touching gentleness and confidence. No newspaper ever escaped him. One man in Gentryville, a Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, took a Louisville paper, and here Lincoln went regularly to read and discuss its contents. All the men and boys of the neighborhood gathered there, and everything which the paper related was subjected to their keen, shrewd common-sense. It .1 HE LIVED FROM THE TIME HEWAS SEVEN UNTIL HE EECAME OF AGE ABOUT 1BE TIME OF ttTHE OETTVcSncrfs- speech:. was not long before young Lincoln be came the favorite member of the group and the one listened to most eagerly. Politics were warmly disruss-ed by these Gentryville citizens, and it may be that sitting on the counter of Jones' grocery Lincoln even discussed slav ery. It certainly was one of the live questions in Indiana at that date. A Debater and aJoker. Young Lincoln was not only winning in these days in the Jones grocery store a reputation as a debater and story-teller; he was becoming known as a kind of backwoods orator. He could repeat with effect all the poems and speeches in his various school readers, he could imitate to perfection the wandering preachers who came to Gentryville, and he could make a polit ical speech so stirring that he drew a crowd about him every time he mount ed a stump. The applause he won was sweet; and frequently he indulged hie gifts when ho ought to have been at work so thought his employers and Thomas, his father. It was trying, no doubt, to the hard-pushed farmers, to 6ee the men who ought to have been cutting grass or chopping wood throw down their sickles or axes to group around a boy whenever he mounted a stump to develop a pet theory or re peat with variations yesterday's ser mon.' In his fondness for speech-making he attended all the trials of the neighborhood, and frequently walked 15 miles to Boonsville to attend court. If his struggle for both livelihood and education was rough and hard, his life was not without amusements. The sports he preferred were . those which brought men together; the spelling school, the husking-bee, the "raising"; and of all of these he was the life by his wit, his stories, his good n-ture, his dogserel verses, his practical jokes, and by a rough kind of politeness. Lin coln's old comrades and friends in In diana have left many tales of how he "went to see the girls"; of how he brought in the biggest back-log and made the brightest fire;-then of how, "sitting around" it, watching the way the sparks flew, the young folks told their fortunes. He helred pare apples, shell corn and crack nuts. He took the girls to meeting and to spelllng school, although he was not often al lowed to take part in the spelling match, for the one who "chose first" always chose "Abe Lincoln," and that was equivalent to winning, as the oth ers knew that "he would stand up the longest." "The Beginning of Love in Me." The nearest approach to sentiment at this time of which we know is a story he once told to an acquaintance in Springfield. It was a rainy day, and he was sitting with his feet on the wood-sill, his eyes on the street, watching the rain. Suddenly he looked up and said: "Did you ever writ) out a story in your rriind? I did when I was a little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us. and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first I ever had heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a great deal, and one day when I was sitting out in the sun by the house I wrote out a story in my mind. I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and tinaiiy i iouna it, ana tney w surprised te-me, lf-Ulke4--wita 111 k Vs- , S , -r - , 1 : W 7) ft X . ----- ; cJOc3IAi CEAWFDBD , ' TOT? VVKOIVF r TKinnr NT "WOIJCED -VTTOlsA HEBOEKOWED -WEEJvi3 XJTE, or WcMLOXOIXr . the girl and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put' her on my horse, und we started off across the1 prairie. After several hours we came to' a camp: and when we rode up we found! It was the one we had left a few hours before, and we went in. The next night we tried again, and the same thing hap pened the hone came back to the same places and then we concluded that we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father to give her to mo. I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once; but I concluded It was not mut-h of a story. But I think that was the beginning of love wilh me." Two Tragedies of Lincoln's Boyhood His life had its tragedies tragedies so real and profound that they gave dig nity to all the crudeness and poverty which surrounded him, and quickened I and intensified the melancholy tempera ment he had inherited from his mother. Away back in 1S16, when Thomas Lin-, coin had started to find a farm in Jn-; dlana, bidding his wife be ready to go into the wilderness on his return, Nancy Lincoln had taken her boy and girl to a tiny grave, that cf her youngest child; and the three had there said good-bye to a little one whom the cliildren had scarcely known, but for whom the mother's grief was so keen that the boy never forgot the scene. Two years later he saw lis father make a green pine box and put his dead mother into it, and he saw her buried not far from their cabin, almost without prayer. Young as he was. It is said that it was his efforts which brought a parson from Kentucky, three months later, to preach the sermon and conduct the service which seemed to the child a necessary honor to the dead. As sad as the death of iis mother had been was that of his only sister, Sarah, Married to Aaron GrlgRby in IRiii, sTi'o had died a year and a half later in child birth, a death which to her brother must have seemed a horror and aniystery. Apart from these family sorrows he even saw in those days one of his com panions go suddenly mad. The young man never recovered his reason, but sank into idiocy. All night ho would croon plaintive songs, and Lincoln himself tells how, fascinated by this mysterious mal ady, - he used to rise before daylight to cross the fields and listen to this funeral dirge of the reason. In Fplte of the poverty and rudeness of his life the depth of his nature had not been blunted. He could feel Intensely, and his imagina tion was quick to respond to tiw touch of mystery. (Copyright. 19US. by the McCiure Co. Copyright, 1S35. by S. S. McCluro Limited. "WHAT THEX?" BY JUD POTTER. If T rmild pail the seas whore icr billows mil And T'ftnt the Nation's emblem at North and .niilhorn pole: Climb up far mountain heights, an yet un reached by mn And master all the unknown arts after that, what then? Could I attain the icreatest wealth, and all the world command, Know all tlio noitders of the sea and those upon the land: Diacovcr why the flowers bloom in every vale and sicn, And even know where tim was born after that, what then? Could I the sinple problem solve that fills the world with ptrife. That most mysterious of all the prin ciple of life And write it on , the vaulted sky. where ail rould read, and when At laEt, with problem solved, after that what then? Through faith T see, in future years, the problem all unrolled; "Unrest, with Its incessant lash, its mean ing must unfold. And down the coming ages 'twill be re vealed to men. The questions sealed for eons past "the wherefores and the when." Arleta. Or. Housing Berlin's Toor. Harper's. Berlin has co-operative tenements whose inmates have light and air In plenty, and where there Is every evidence of scientific thought in housing the poor. On the other hand, there are over 9".000 people living In underground tenements in that imperial city, whose dark holes are still unregulated by law. Beicgins is a penal offence, in Berlin, and professional vagahondsee is "sternly punished," yet Sno.nno people seek refuse In Uvo municipal night shelters 01 Juerun all'ne la out elnste -year, i