AMUSEMENTS OF LINCOLN’S LIFE IN INDIANA.—HIS FIRST SORROWS.
If Abraham Lincoln’s early struggle for both livelihood and education
was rough and hard, his life was not without amusements. At home the
rude household was overflowing with life. There were Abraham and his
sister, a step-brother and two step-sisters, and a cousin of Nancy Hanks
Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, whom misfortune had made an inmate of the Lincoln
home—quite enough to plan sports and mischief and keep time from growing
dull. Thomas Lincoln and Dennis Hanks were both famous story-tellers,
and the Lincolns spent many a cozy evening about their cabin fire,
repeating the stories they knew.
[Illustration:
GRAVE OF LINCOLN’S SISTER.
From a photograph taken for this work. Sarah, or Nancy, Lincoln was
born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in 1807. In 1826 she married Aaron
Grigsby, and a year later died. She was buried not far from
Gentryville, in what is now called “Old Pigeon Cemetery.” Her grave
is marked by the rude stone directly over the star. The marble
monument in the centre is that of her husband.
]
[Illustration:
CORN-HUSK BROOMS AND MOPS.
Photographed for this work from the originals, in the United States
National Museum at Washington. Corn-husks were used by the pioneers
of the West to make brooms, brushes, mats, and horse-collars.
]
Of course the boys hunted. Not that Abraham ever became a true
sportsman; indeed, he seems to have lacked the genuine sporting
instinct. In a curious autobiography, written entirely in the third
person, which Mr. Lincoln prepared at the request of a friend in
1860,[9] he says of his exploits as a hunter: “A few days before the
completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of
wild turkeys approached the new log cabin; and Abraham, with a rifle
gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He
has never since pulled the trigger on any larger game.” This exploit is
confirmed by Dennis Hanks, who says: “No doubt about A. Lincoln’s
killing the turkey. He done it with his father’s rifle, made by William
Lutes of Bullitt County, Kentucky. I have killed a hundred deer with her
myself; turkeys too numerous to mention.”
Footnote 9:
Preserved in “Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works.” Edited by John G.
Nicolay and John Hay. Volume I., page 639. The Century Company.
[Illustration:
A LINCOLN CHAIR.
This chair was made from rails split by Abraham Lincoln when he was
living in Spencer County, Indiana.
]
But there were many other country sports which he enjoyed to the full.
He went swimming in the evenings; fished with the other boys in Pigeon
Creek, and caught chubs and suckers enough to delight any boy; he
wrestled, jumped, and ran races at the noon rests. He was present at
every country horse-race and fox-chase. The sports he preferred were
those which brought men together: the spelling-school, the husking-bee,
the “raising;” and of all these he was the life by his wit, his stories,
his good nature, his doggerel verses, his practical jokes, and by a
rough kind of politeness—for even in Indiana in those times there was a
notion of politeness, and one of Lincoln’s schoolmasters had even given
“lessons in manners.” Lincoln seems to have profited in a degree by
them; for Mrs. Crawford, at whose home he worked some time, declares
that he always “lifted his hat and bowed” when he made his appearance.
[Illustration:
PIONEER KITCHEN UTENSILS.
Drawn for this work from the original articles, in the United States
National Museum, through the courtesy of the director, Mr. G. Brown
Goode. The articles in the group are a hominy mortar and pestle,
water gourd and gourd dipper, wooden pails and tub, and a wooden
piggin.
]
There was, of course, a rough gallantry among the young people; and
Lincoln’s old comrades and friends in Indiana 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 the young people,
sitting around it, watching the way the sparks flew, told their
fortunes. He helped pare apples, shell corn, and crack nuts. He took the
girls to meeting and to spelling-school, though he was not often allowed
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 others
knew that “he would stand up the longest.”
The nearest approach to sentiment at this time, of which we know, is
recorded in a story Lincoln once told to an acquaintance in Springfield.
It was a rainy day, and he was sitting with his feet on the window-sill,
his eyes on the street, watching the rain. Suddenly he looked up and
said:
[Illustration:
THE HILL NEAR GENTRYVILLE FROM WHICH THE LINCOLNS TOOK THEIR LAST LOOK
AT THEIR INDIANA HOME.
]
“Did you ever write out a story in your mind? 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 finally I found it, and they
were surprised to see me. I talked with the girl and persuaded her to
elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse, and we started off
across the 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 happened—the
horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded that we ought
not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father to give her to
me. I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began
once; but I concluded it was not much of a story. But I think that was
the beginning of love with me.”[10]
Footnote 10:
Interview with Mr. T. W. S. Kidd of Springfield, Illinois, editor of
“The Morning Monitor.”
[Illustration:
LINCOLN’S FIRST HOME IN ILLINOIS.
After a photograph owned by H. E. Barker of Springfield, Illinois. A
printed description accompanying the photograph says: “The above is
an exact reproduction of a photograph taken in 1865 of Abraham
Lincoln’s cabin on the banks of the Sangamon River. The cabin was
located upon Section 28, Harristown Township, Macon County,
Illinois.” The genuineness of the picture is attested by the Hon.
Richard J. Oglesby, at that time Governor of Illinois.
]
EARLY SORROWS.
His life had its tragedies as well as its touch of romance—tragedies so
real and profound that they gave dignity to all the crudeness and
poverty which surrounded him, and quickened and intensified the
melancholy temperament he had inherited from his mother. Away back in
1816, when Thomas Lincoln had started to find a farm in Indiana, 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 of her youngest child;
and the three had there said good-by to a little one whom the children
had scarcely known, but for whom the mother’s grief was so keen that the
boy never forgot the scene.
[Illustration:
LINCOLN’S BROAD-AXE.
This broad-axe is said to have been owned originally by Abram Bales of
New Salem; and, according to tradition, it was bought from him by
Lincoln. After Lincoln forsook the woods, he sold the axe to one Mr.
Irvin. Mr. L. W. Bishop of Petersburg now has the axe, having gotten
it directly from Mr. Irvin. There are a number of affidavits
attesting its genuineness. The axe has evidently seen hard usage,
and is now covered with a thick coat of rust.
]
Two years later he saw his 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 was his efforts, it is said, 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.[11] As sad as the death of his mother was that of his only
sister, Sarah. Married to Aaron Grigsby in 1826, she had died a year and
a half later in child-birth, a death which to her brother must have
seemed a horror and a mystery.
Footnote 11:
It still happens frequently in the mountain districts of Tennessee
that the funeral services are not held until months after the burial.
A gentleman who has lived much in the South tells of a man marrying a
second wife at a decent interval after the death of his first, but
still _before_ the funeral of the first had taken place.
Apart from these family sorrows there was all the crime and misery of
the community—all of which came to his ears and awakened his nature. He
even saw in those days one of his companions go suddenly mad. The young
man never recovered his reason, but sank into idiocy. All night he would
croon plaintive songs, and Lincoln himself tells how, fascinated by this
mysterious malady, he used to rise before daylight to cross the fields
and listen to this funeral dirge of the reason. In spite of the poverty
and rudeness of his life the depth of his nature was unclouded. He could
feel intensely, and his imagination was quick to respond to the touch of
mystery.