"THOU SHALT NOT COVET"
The wrestling match, that proved the championship of Sangamon River,
established Abe Lincoln with his love of peace and his unlimited
reserve of physical power to enforce it, as the peace-maker of New
Salem.
The following day John Rutledge called at the store.
John Rutledge, with his partner Cameron, was the founder of New Salem.
Some few years before, he had come from Kentucky with his family,
bought a farm a few miles to the west, built a mill at New Salem, and
opened a store and a tavern.
Within a year, ten log houses had been added to the original two. A
cobbler and a blacksmith had shops. Then a few more houses were built,
and a cooper mill where crude barrels and kegs were made.
John Rutledge, a descendant of the famous Rutledge family of the
Carolinas, possessed the manly qualities of his ancestors in full
measure, and pioneer life had by no means obliterated those instincts
which make generous friends and progressive citizens.
Mr. Rutledge was also a firm believer in education as the foundation
for the future greatness of the new Western country as well as the
success of the individual, and it was largely due to his efforts that
the Scotch schoolmaster, Mentor Graham, was among the first settlers.
John Rutledge had been into the new store before to look around. Once
he had tarried to hear a story. But he was a busy man and had as yet
formed no special acquaintance with the much-discussed Abe Lincoln.
This visit was for the purpose of getting acquainted. After Rutledge
had warmly congratulated the ungainly clerk, on his insistence on
fair play, they sat down to talk, and the conversation turned to a
discussion of the widely renowned circuit-rider, Peter Cartwright, who
was expected to hold a wonderful meeting in the vicinity of Springfield
during the month of September.
Abe Lincoln had heard of Peter Cartwright, the eccentric Methodist
exhorter, who was born in a Kentucky cane-brake and rocked in a bee-gum
cradle, and could tell many stories about him.
The outcome of this short visit was an invitation to the clerk to visit
at Rutledge Inn and tell some of the Cartwright stories.
Rutledge Inn was the largest building in the town except the mill. None
of the other homes had more than two rooms, some only one. Rutledge Inn
had four rooms and a sort of porch made by an extension of roof over a
hardly packed, cleanly swept, dirt floor. It was here Mentor Graham,
Doctor Allen, John Rutledge, William Green and other of the intelligent
citizens gathered to discuss news, matters of education, religion and
politics.
Quite pleased with his invitation, Abe Lincoln went to the Inn and
found in addition to the family, Mentor Graham and Doctor Allen.
It was a night in late August. The stars twinkled above the dark
outlines of the trees that crested the bluff. The one road of New
Salem, that wound its way down the hill, lay like a gray ribbon and log
houses made the darker spots that at irregular intervals marked it.
Occasionally the call of a night bird sent ripples of wave-melody onto
the stillness, or sometimes the tinkle of a bell stirred the ocean of
the night silence, while the fall of the dam water sent out its rhythm
in never-ending cadences.
The discussion turned to religion, a most fruitful topic of
argument, for Mentor Graham was a Hard Shell and Doctor Allen was a
Predestinarian. This night there was the uncommon Abe Lincoln to be
heard from. Stories of Peter Cartwright were first on the program,
and from these the conversation turned to a discussion of religion in
particular and its uses to mankind.
"One of the best uses of religion," Dr. Allen said, "is to cast out
fear. Medicine won't work when fear is present and there's been many a
man scared to death. I was called out once to see a child who had been
bitten by a rattlesnake. She died and her father nearly lost his mind.
Later he got bit in the night by something--a spider, I think. He was
sure it was a rattlesnake. There was no need of the man dying, but he
did die--actually _frightened to death_. It's an awful condition for
a soul to be in that fears eternal punishment for sin. Religion takes
away this fear."
"Just what is religion?" asked Abe Lincoln. "From what I've been able
to gather, it's preachin' purgatory and damnation till you get up a
panic, offerin' the mercy of God as a way of escape, and then takin' up
a collection for the good advice you have given--is this religion?"
The men laughed.
"I may be off," Lincoln continued, "but looks to me like there wouldn't
be so much need of gettin' the fear out of folks if the fear of hell
wasn't first preached into them."
"Don't you believe in hell?" Mentor Graham asked.
"Can't say I do."
"But you believe in God, I am sure."
"Yes--only a fool has said in his heart there is no God."
"But the same authority that teaches God teaches hell," Doctor Allen
said.
"Not to my way of thinking it don't," Lincoln answered. "'The heavens
declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork,' the
Book tells me. But I can't see how the heavens declare the glory of
hell nor its necessity either."
"But how can God punish the unrighteous without a hell? Can't you
see that by taking hell out of the Bible you destroy its value as an
inspired book, and where else can one learn of God?"
"Have you forgotten the heavens and the stars? And then there are other
things, too, that tell of God besides the Bible. Did you ever watch a
dirt-dauber? Know how they work, do you? Builds his nest and puts in
his egg. The young one is not goin' to get out until it can fly, so it
must have food. The parent goes in search. Here comes a worm. Good food
and enough to last until the young dauber is ready to wing its way. But
there is a difficulty. If the dauber kills the worm and puts it in,
it will be rotten as Heck before the young is ready to get out. What
happens? The dauber sticks its stinger into a certain spot where it
paralyzes the worm--knocks him out, so to speak, without killin' him.
Then he puts him in the cell with the young, seals him and leaves. What
I say is--where does the mud-dauber get his knowledge? Who told him to
deaden that food without killin' it? Who shows him, or her, just the
right point to stick in that sting? To me it has always seemed that any
Creator that can plan this way has more than horse-sense. But to make
folks like the Book says, in his own likeness and image, and then get
mad at them and roast them alive a million or so years cause they can't
swallow Hard Shell religion or gulp down Predestinarianism, looks like
God hain't planned things as well as a mud-dauber. Maybe I'm lackin'
myself, but I got to turn loose of God or hell one, and for my purpose
I'm choosin' to hang on to God, and I somehow got a feelin' He's not
goin' back on me. Twouldn't be fair--and God plays fair, gentlemen--God
plays fair."
There was a moment of silence. Then John Rutledge said, "Davy, get a
jug from the cellar. Sis, bring the water pitcher, glasses and sugar."
As the boy and girl arose Lincoln turned slightly. He had not noticed
before that the daughter of the house had joined the group.
As he saw her now in the semi-darkness she looked like some fair
creature of another world. He had heard that Ann Rutledge was the
prettiest girl in town. She had passed his store and been pointed
out to him. He had been told she was engaged to marry John McNeil
who was the most settled young fellow in town and already worth ten
thousand dollars. But neither of these news items had interested him
sufficiently to take his attention from the story he had happened to be
telling or hearing when she had passed.
As his eyes turned toward her, he saw she was leaning forward as if not
to lose a word, and gazing at him intently.
He changed the glance of his eye to give her a chance to look another
way. Then he turned his glance on her again. As he did so there came to
him a revelation. Here was the pilgrim. How did he know it? He could
not tell, yet, as surely as she sat there in the dim light, as surely
as his eyes were resting on her golden head and fair face, he knew it.
Mentor Graham and Doctor Allen had launched a spirited discussion
on baptism. Abe Lincoln did not join them. He turned his eyes again
toward the girl. In the half-light he could not see the expression
of her face, but her face was turned toward him and he was conscious
she was thinking of him. She turned away as if embarrassed, but no
sooner had he shifted than the dark eyes again turned toward the heroic
figure, a figure like a bronze, the profile of his face half-Roman and
half-Indian. His head rested on a neck of cords and muscle which stood
straight out from a turn-down collar.
As irrestible as the pole draws the magnet, the glances of the two were
drawn toward each other again, and in the dark each felt the meeting of
this glance. Then Ann Rutledge got up and went away.
Abe Lincoln thought of the bird he had heard the night he sat on the
ladder--the night the voice had called to him from the heights. He
smiled.
* * * * *
The next morning Abe Lincoln was at the store early, waiting to see
McNeil pass. When he had heard half a dozen times before that Ann
Rutledge was engaged to marry McNeil, the words had been as idle
gossip. Nor had he given McNeil any special attention. Now all was
different. With keen eye and feverish desire he waited to pass judgment.
As the young man passed, the watching Lincoln felt himself moved by
some tremendous impulse of destruction, a destruction that would
annihilate this man from the face of the earth as completely as though
he had never existed.
As he stood in the doorway of the rude frontier store, no Sinaitic
thunder roared its disapproval of this primitive animal impulse. But he
heard, instead, the gentle voice of a woman who had long lain sleeping
under the tangle of a forsaken wildwood--a voice that had read to him
from an open book by the light of a pine torch fire, "Thou shalt not
covet."