STORY OF A BOY
Abraham Lincoln was not elected to the Legislature. He received,
however, every vote in New Salem except three, and his friends had
hopes that he might yet develop into something--nobody knew just what.
Meantime some changes had been made in mercantile affairs in New Salem
and the store of Offutt was no more. This left Abe Lincoln without a
job.
An opportunity offered for him to secure a store of his own. A store
owned by another man had not long since been raided by the Clary Grove
gang. After drinking all the "wet goods," they broke the glassware,
tied bottles to the tails of their horses, and with a whoop and a yell
went riding about the country.
Abe Lincoln had no money, but with a young fellow named Berry, whose
father was a leading Presbyterian citizen, he bought the store and they
gave their notes in payment.
Certain it was the Clary Grove gang would not molest Lincoln's store.
On the other hand, they would have fought to protect it.
In fitting up this store Lincoln and Berry took out a tavern license,
which gave them the right to sell liquor in small quantities. All
stores kept liquor. Yet this fact did not make it seem right that one
who did not drink himself, who knew the trouble it made others, who
even agreed with Dr. Allen that it was poison, should keep a barrel
of whiskey in the corner of his store, and more than one discussion
between Abe Lincoln and the good doctor were engaged in during these
days.
Several treasures came into possession of the junior member of the firm
after Berry and Lincoln opened their store. Lincoln one day bought a
barrel. What it contained he did not look to see. It was a good barrel.
The man said it had a book or two down under the papers, and as he
needed the few cents badly, the purchase price was paid and the barrel
put aside.
When some weeks later the contents was poured out Abe Lincoln
discovered a treasure. He deserted his store long enough to run over to
Rutledge's to make known his wonderful good luck. His homely face was
bright with pleasure and his dull, gray eyes were shining as he held
out a worn and stained copy of Blackstone.
"Look! Look!" he cried, and in his joy he even tried to dance a jig.
Another rich possession that came to him was a volume of poems
containing one that he especially liked, the title of which was
"Immortality."
This poem Abe Lincoln wanted to read the Rutledges as they sat around
the fire on an early fall evening.
But Davy did not like the sound of the first verse and asked for a
story of the killing of Abe Lincoln's grandfather by Indians. When
this was told he wanted to hear about the voodoo fortune-teller in New
Orleans and the slave-markets and the ships in the harbor.
So Lincoln told these things while John Rutledge smoked and Mrs.
Rutledge and Ann busied their fingers with their mending, meantime
listening with as much interest as the children to their boarder's talk.
After Davy's stories had been told it was Sonny's turn. "Tell about
when you were a little boy," he urged; "that's what I want."
Nothing could have been more acceptable to the entire family than this,
for he had never said much about his own affairs.
"The little boy you ask me to tell about," he said, "lived far away
in a dense forest; wild cats screamed down the ravines; wolves howled
across the clearin'; bears growled in the under-brush. The house this
little boy lived in was not much better than the cave or the den of the
animals. It was built of logs but had no floor, no windows, and no skin
hung to the door. In a loft above the one room was a nest of leaves and
into this he climbed at night on pegs driven into the wall.
"Though he was very poor, this little boy was rich in one thing, and
that was his mother. She toiled until her shoulders were stooped and
thin, her face pale and her clear, gray eyes dim and sad, but she was
never too tired to love her children, the boy and his little sister
Sarah. She could read well and had brought into the wilderness three
books: the Bible which she read daily, 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and
Aesop's 'Fables.' Before the boy learned to read she told them stories
from these books in the yellow light of a pine torch which burned upon
the hearth, and the boy minded not the cry of wolves, nor wind, nor
sleet, when he could hear these wonderful stories.
"The boy was taught many things that boys on the frontier must know. He
learned early to skin animals and fix the hides for clothes but he was
never a hunter. He some way felt that the animals had a right to life,
just as he had. They knew what it was to be hungry and cold and to
sleep in leaves. It was a funny notion, but the boy felt in a way they
were his brothers and he never killed them.
"After he learned to read he spent hours on the floor lyin' in the
firelight with the Bible spread before him, spellin' out the words and
learnin' the verses until he had read the Book many times.
"When he was nine years old his mother made him a linsey-woolsey shirt
and possum-skin cap to wear with his buckskin breeches and sent him
away through the woods to school. He only went for a few weeks. The
boys in this school put coals on terrapin's backs. He was not quick to
learn from his books but he made speeches against this cruelty, and his
first fight was with a boy for robbin' a bird's nest.
"In one school he went to for a short time later, a master named
Crawford taught manners. He made one boy stand at the door. When
the pupils came up they were taught to lift their hats and were
introduced to each other. This teacher said manners were as important
as book-knowledge.
"The boy only went to school a few weeks altogether, when he was hired
out by his father to work from sunrise to sunset for twenty-five cents
a day. Still he studied, and a cousin named Dennis Hanks helped him.
They made ink with blackberry root and copperas. They made pens of
turkey-buzzard feathers. When they had no paper, which was most of the
time, they wrote on boards with charred sticks. The boy figured on a
wooden shovel and scraped it off clean when it was too full to hold
more figures.
"His mother was always interested in his effort to get an education.
She always helped him. She was sorry for him because he could not go to
school, but urged him to learn so that he would not always be in the
backwoods.
"Once he borrowed from the Crawford man who taught the school a book
entitled 'Weems' Life of Washington!' It told about our country's
struggle for freedom, how the Hessians were fought and how Washington
crossed the Delaware. He pored over it until the night. He took
it up into a loft and put it in a chink so it would be handy for
early-morning study. A rain-storm which arose in the night beat in on
the book and swelled the covers. The boy took the book back to its
owner the next mornin' and offered to buy it. The man made him pull
fodder three days for it. The book belonged to the boy now. He read it
over and over until he became well acquainted with the Father of his
Country and began to dream dreams of what he might some day do."
Abe Lincoln had been talking in a reminiscent mood with a half-smile
on his face. The smile now passed. He continued: "Then death came into
the settlement and took several neighbors. The mother of the boy was
stricken down. She was thirty-five miles from a doctor and her nearest
neighbor was dead. Seven days she lay, her children doin' for her. Then
she called the children to her bedside. To the boy she said, 'Be an
honest and a faithful boy, be a good and tender man. Look after your
sister.' Then death came into the shack of a house and took the patient
mother.
"The boy's father built a coffin and dug a grave in the clearin' near
the house, and here in the edge of the dense forest where the wild
things lived the tired mother's body was put to rest. There was no
preacher to say a last word, there was no music but the singin' and
the sighin' of the trees. There was no one to cover the rude coffin
with earth but the father. There were no mourners but the two children,
holdin' hands beside the grave and callin' their mother to come back.
"After the mother had gone the little girl tried to cook and keep
house. The boy went every day to the edge of the forest. Very soon the
tangle began to reach over his mother's grave. He wanted her to have a
funeral sermon. It was not that he thought she needed it. He was sure
she was with God all straightened up and no longer thin but always
smilin' and glad. But she would have wanted a sermon, she had spoken of
it.
"So, the boy wrote a letter to a good Baptist minister his mother had
known back in Kentucky and told him what was wanted. It was nearly
one year later that he came a distance of eighty miles to preach the
sermon. All the people in the country came; not before had a funeral
been preached when a woman had so long been sleepin' in her grave.
And, as they gathered about, their faces were wet with tears. The boy
never forgot it, nor the preacher's words.
"That little boy is a man now. Early one mornin' years ago he went
for a last time to the lonely grave and kneelin' there, promised his
mother's God again that he would be honest and tender. And whatever
that boy is now or ever may be, he will owe to that angel mother lyin'
under the wild tangle at the edge of the forest with God's stars
watchin' it until the judgment-day."
It was quite still around the low-burning fire when he ended his story.
Then John Rutledge spoke abruptly, "Davy, don't you see the fire needs
a log? Sonny, put Tige out, he's scratching down the house. Ann, bring
a pitcher of cider and a plate of apples."
"Put a few sweet turnips in," Abe Lincoln added; "there's nothing
better than a turnip."