hospitality. He would come running out of the house and say, "Stop that,
Abe. What's happened to your manners?" Then he would turn to the
traveler, "You must excuse him. 'Light, stranger, and come in to
supper." Then Abe would go away whistling to show that he did not care.
When he found Dennis he would say, "Pa says it's not polite to ask
questions, but I guess I wasn't meant to be polite. There's such a lot
of things to know, and how am I going to know them if I don't ask
questions?" He simply stored them away until a later time, and when
supper was over he usually found his chance to make use of the visitor.
In that day Indiana was still part of the wilderness. Primeval woods
stood close to Pidgeon Creek, and not far away were roving bands of Sacs
and Sioux, and also wild animals--bears, wildcats, and lynxes. The
settlers fought the Indians, and made use of the wild creatures for
clothing and food, and to sell at the country stores. The children spent
practically all their time out-of-doors, and young Abe Lincoln learned
the habits of the wild creatures, and explored the far recesses of the
woods.
From his life in the woods the boy became very fond of animals. One day
some of the boys at school put a lighted coal on a turtle's back in
sport. Abe rescued the turtle, and when he got a chance wrote a
composition in school about cruel jokes on animals. It was a good paper,
and the teacher had the boy read it before the class. All the boys liked
Abe, and they took to heart what he had to say in the matter.
It was a rough sort of life that the children of the early settlers led,
and the chances were all in favor of the Lincoln boy growing up to be
like his father, a kind-hearted, ignorant, ne'er-do-well type of man.
His mother, however, who came of a good Virginia family, had done her
best to give him some ambition. Once she had said to him, "Abe, learn
all you can, and grow up to be of some account. You've got just as
good Virginia blood in you as George Washington had." Abe did not forget
that.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
Soon after the family moved to Pidgeon Creek his mother died, and a
little later a stepmother took her place. This woman soon learned that
the boy was not the ordinary type, and kept encouraging him to make
something of himself. She was always ready to listen when he read, to
help him with his lessons, to cheer him. When he got too old to wear his
bearskin suit she told him that if he would earn enough money to get
some muslin, she would make him some white shirts, so that he would not
be ashamed to go to people's houses. Abe earned the money, and Mrs.
Lincoln purchased the cloth and made the shirts. After that Abe cut
quite a figure in Gentryville, because he liked people, and knew so many
good stories that he was always popular with a crowd.
Small things showed the ability that was in the raw country lad. When he
was only fourteen a copy of Henry Clay's speeches fell into his hands,
and he learned most of them by heart, and what he learned from them
interested him in history. Then a little later his stepmother was ill
for some time, and Abe went to church every Sunday, and on his return
repeated the sermon almost word for word to her. Again he loved to
argue, and would take up some question he had asked of a stranger and go
on with it when the latter returned to the Creek, perhaps months after
the first visit. Mrs. Lincoln noted these things, and made up her mind
that her stepson would be a great man some day. Most frequently she
thought he would be a great lawyer, because, as she said, "When Abe got
started arguing, the other fellow'd pretty soon say he had enough."
Probably at this time Abe was more noted for his love of learning new
things and for his great natural strength than for anything else. He was
in no sense an infant prodigy. It took him a long time to learn, but
when he had once acquired anything it stayed by him permanently. The
books he had read he knew from cover to cover, and the words he had
learned to spell at the school "spelling bees" he never forgot. Now and
again he tried his hand at writing short compositions, usually on
subjects he had read of in books, and these little essays were always to
the point and showed that the boy knew what he was discussing. One or
two of these papers got into the hands of a local newspaper and appeared
in print, much to Abe's surprise and to his stepmother's delight.
Yet after all these qualities were not the ones which won him greatest
admiration in the rough country life. The boys and young men admired his
great size and strength, for when he was only nineteen he had reached
his full growth, and stood six feet four inches tall. Countless stories
were current about his feats of strength.
At one time, it was said, young Abe Lincoln was seen to pick up and
carry away a chicken coop weighing six hundred pounds. At another time
Abe happened to come upon some men who were building a contrivance for
lifting some heavy posts from the ground. He stepped up to them and
said, "Say, let me have a try," and in a few minutes he had shouldered
the posts and carried them where they were wanted. As a rail-splitter he
had no equal. A man for whom he worked told his father that Abe could
sink his axe deeper into the wood than any man he ever saw.
This great strength was a very valuable gift in such a community as that
of Gentryville, and made people respect this boy even more than would
his learning and his kindness of heart.
A little later he lived in a village named New Salem, and there he found
a crowd of boys who were called the "Clary's Grove Boys," who were noted
for the rough handling they gave to strangers. Many a new boy had been
hardly dealt with at their hands. Sometimes they would lead him into a
fight and then beat him black and blue, and sometimes they would nail
the stranger into a hogshead and roll him down a steep hill.
When Abe Lincoln first came to the town they were afraid to tackle him,
but when their friends taunted the crowd of young roughs with being
afraid of Lincoln's strength, they decided to lay a trap for him. The
leader of the gang was a very good wrestler, and he seized an
opportunity when all the men of the town were gathered at the country
store to challenge Abe to a wrestling match. Abe was not at all anxious
to accept the challenge, but was finally driven to it by the taunts the
gang threw at him. A ring was made in the road outside the store, and
Abe and the bully set to.
The leader of the gang, however, found that he could not handle this
tall young stranger as easily as he had handled other youths. He gave a
signal for help. Thereupon the rest of the roughs swarmed about the two
wrestlers and by kicking at Abe's legs and trying to trip him they
nearly succeeded in bringing him to the ground. When he saw how set they
were on downing him Abe's blood rose, and suddenly putting forth his
whole strength he seized his opponent in his arms and very nearly choked
the life out of him.
For a moment it looked as though the rest of the crowd would set upon
Lincoln and that he would have to fight the lot of them single-handed.
He sprang back against a wall and called to them to come on. But he
looked so able to take care of any number that they faltered, and in a
moment their first fury gave place to an honest admiration for Lincoln's
nerve. That ended his initiation, and as long as he stayed in New Salem
the "Clary's Grove Boys" were his devoted followers.
The leader of the gang, whom Abe had nearly throttled, became his sworn
friend, and this bond lasted through life. When other men threatened Abe
or spoke against him in any way, this youth was always first to stand up
for him, and acted as his champion many times. Curiously enough, in
after years, when Abe had become a lawyer, he defended his old
opponent's son when the young man was on trial for his life, and
succeeded in saving him.
Such an adventure as this with the "Clary's Grove Boys" was typical of
the way in which Abe, as he grew up, came to acquire a very definite
position in the community. In one way and another he gained the
reputation which the boys gave him of being not only the strongest, but
also "the cleverest fellow that had ever broke into the settlement."
There were many strong men in that country, but there were few really
clever ones, and the simple farmers were only too willing to admire
brains when they met them.
The time had passed when the boy could stay in the small surroundings of
Pidgeon Creek. First he tried life on one of the river steamboats, then
served as a clerk in a store at the town of New Salem, and there he
began at odd moments to study law.
A little later he knew enough law to become an attorney, and went to
Springfield, and after that it was only a short time before he had won
his clients. His cousin Denny came to hear him try one of his first
cases. He watched the tall, lank young fellow, still as ungainly as in
his early boyhood, and heard him tell the jury some of those same
stories he had read aloud before the fire.
When Abe had finished his cousin said to him, "Why did you tell those
people so many stories?"
"Why, Denny," said Abe, "a story teaches a lesson. God tells truths in
parables; they are easier for common folks to understand, and
recollect."
Such was the simple boyhood of Abraham Lincoln, but its very simplicity,
and the hardships he had to overcome to get an education, made him a
strong man. He knew people, and when he came later to be President and
to guide the country through the greatest trial in its history, it was
those same qualities of perseverance and courage and trust in the people
that made the simple-minded man the great helmsman of the Republic.
XX
Charles Dickens
The Boy of the London Streets: 1812-1870
The little fellow who worked all day long in the tumble-down old house
by the river Thames pasting oil-paper covers on boxes of blacking fell
ill one afternoon. One of the workmen, a big man named Bob Fagin, made
him lie down on a pile of straw in the corner and placed
blacking-bottles filled with hot water beside him to keep him warm.
There he lay until it was time for the men to stop work, and then his
friend Fagin, looking down upon the small boy of twelve, asked if he
felt able to go home. The boy got up looking so big-eyed, white-cheeked
and thin that the man put his arm about his shoulder.
"Never mind, Bob, I think I'm all right now," said the boy. "Don't you
wait for me, go on home."
"You ain't fit to go alone, Charley. I'm comin' along with you."
"'Deed I am, Bob. I'm feelin' as spry as a cricket." The little fellow
threw back his shoulders and headed for the stairs.
Fagin, however, insisted on keeping him company, and so the two, the
shabbily-dressed undersized boy, and the big strapping man came out into
the murky London twilight and took their way over the Blackfriars
Bridge.
"Been spendin' your money at the pastry shops, Charley, again? That's
what was the matter with you, I take it."
The boy shook his head. "No, Bob. I'm tryin' to save. When I get my
week's money I put it away in a bureau drawer, wrapped in six little
paper packages with a day of the week on each one. Then I know just how
much I've got to live on, and Sundays don't count. Sometimes I do get
hungry though, so hungry! Then I look in at the windows and play at
bein' rich."
They crossed the Bridge, the boy's big eyes seeming to take note of
everything, the man, duller-witted, listening to his chatter. Several
times the boy tried to say good-night, but Fagin would not be shaken
off. "I'm goin' to see you to your door, Charley lad," he said each
time.
At last they came into a little street near the Southwark Bridge. The
boy stopped by the steps of a house. "Here 'tis, Bob. Good-night. It was
good of you to take the trouble for me."
"Good-night, Charley."
The boy ran up the steps, and, as he noticed that Fagin still stopped,
he pulled the door-bell. Then the man went on down the street. When the
door opened the boy asked if Mr. Fagin lived there, and being told that
he did not, said he must have made a mistake in the house. Turning about
he saw that his friend had disappeared around a corner. With a little
smile of triumph he made off in the other direction.
The door of the Marshalsea Prison stood open like a great black mouth.
The boy, tired with his long tramp, was glad to reach it and to run in.
Climbing several long flights of stairs he entered a room on the top
story where he found his family, his father, a tall pompous-looking man
dressed all in black, his mother, an amiable but extremely fragile
woman, and a small brother and sister seated at a table eating supper.
The room was very sparsely furnished; the only bright spot in it was a
small fire in a rusty grate, flanked by two bricks to prevent burning
too much fuel.
There was a vacant place at the table for Charles, and he sat down upon
a stool and ate as ravenously as though he had not tasted food for
months. Meanwhile the tall man at the head of the table talked solemnly
to his wife at the other end, using strange long words which none of the
children could understand.
Supper over Mr. and Mrs. Dickens (for that was their name) and the two
younger children sat before the tiny fire, and Mr. Dickens talked of how
he might raise enough money to pay his debts, leave the prison, and
start fresh in some new business. Charles had heard these same plans
from his father's lips a thousand times before, and so he took from the
cupboard an old book which he had bought at a little second-hand shop a
few days before, a small tattered copy of "Don Quixote," and read it by
the light of a tallow candle in the corner.
The lines soon blurred before the boy's tired eyes, his head nodded, and
he was fast asleep. He was awakened by his father's deep voice. "Time
to be leaving, Charles, my son. You have not forgotten that my pecuniary
situation prevents my choosing the hour at which I shall close the door
of my house. Fortunately it is a predicament which I trust will soon be
obviated to our mutual satisfaction."
The small fellow stood up, shook hands solemnly with his father, kissed
his mother, and took his way out of the great prison. Open doors on
various landings gave him pictures of many queer households; sometimes
he would stop as though to consider some unusually puzzling face or
figure.
Into the night again he went, and wound through a dismal labyrinth of
the dark and narrow streets of old London. Sometimes a rough voice or an
evil face would frighten him, and he would take to his heels and run as
fast as he could. When he passed the house where he had asked for Mr.
Fagin he chuckled to himself; he would not have had his friend know for
worlds that his family's home was the Marshalsea Prison.
Even that room in the prison, however, was more cheerful than the small
back-attic chamber where the boy fell asleep for the second time that
night. He slept on a bed made up on the floor, but his slumber was no
less deep on that account.
The noise of workmen in a timber yard under his window woke Charles when
it seemed much too dark to be morning. It was morning, however, and he
was quickly dressed, and making his breakfast from the penny cottage
loaf of bread, section of cream cheese and small bottle of milk, which
were all he could afford to buy from the man who rented him the room.
Then he took the roll of paper marked with the name of the day from the
drawer of his bureau and counted out the pennies into his pocket. They
were not many; he had to live on seven shillings a week, and he tucked
them away very carefully in a pocket lest he lose them and have to do
without his lunch.
He was not yet due at the blacking-factory, but he hurried away from his
room and joined the crowd of early morning people already on their way
to work. He went down the embankment along the Thames until he came to a
place where a bench was set in a corner of a wall. This was his favorite
lounging-place; London Bridge was just beyond, the river lay in front of
him, and he was far enough away from people to be safe from
interruption.
As he sat there watching the Bridge and the Thames a little girl came to
join him. She was no bigger than he, perhaps a year or two older, but
her face was already shrewd enough for that of a grown-up woman. She was
the maid-of-all-work at a house in the neighborhood, and she had fallen
into the habit of stopping to talk for a few moments with the boy on her
way to work in the morning. She liked to listen to his stories.
This was the boy's hour for inventing his tales; he could spin wonderful
tales about London Bridge, the Tower, and the wharves along the river.
Sometimes he made up stories about the people who passed in front of
them, and they were such astonishing stories that the girl remembered
them all day as she worked in the house. He seemed to believe them
himself; his eyes would grow far away and dreamy and his words would run
on and on until a neighboring clock brought him suddenly back to his own
position.
"You do know a heap o' things, don't you?" said the little girl, lost in
admiration. "I'd rather have a shillin' though than all the fairy tales
in the world."
"I wouldn't," said Charles stoutly. "I'd rather read books than do
anythin' else."
"You've got to eat though," objected his companion, "and books won't
make you food. 'Tain't common sense." She relented in an instant. "It's
fun though, Charley Dickens. Good-bye 'til to-morrow."
Charles went on down to the old blacking-factory by Hungerford Stairs, a
ramshackle building almost hanging over the river, damp and overrun with
rats. His place was in a recess of the counting-room on the first floor,
and as he covered the bottles with the oil-paper tops and tied them on
with string he could look from time to time through a window at the slow
coal barges swinging down the river.
There were very few boys about the place; at lunch time he would wander
off by himself, and selecting his meal from a careful survey of several
pastry-cook's windows invest his money for the day in fancy cakes or a
tart. He missed the company of friends of his own age; even Fanny, his
oldest sister, he saw only on Sundays when she came back to the
Marshalsea from the place where she worked, to spend the day with her
family. It was only grown-up people that he saw most of the time, and
they were too busy with their own affairs to take much interest in the
small, shabby boy who looked just like any one of a thousand other
children of the streets. Of all the men at the factory it was only the
big clumsy fellow named Fagin who would stop to chat with the lad.
So it was that Charles was forced to make friends with whomever he
could, people of any age or condition, and was driven to spend much of
his spare time roaming about the streets, lounging by the river, reading
stray books by a candle in the prison or in the little attic where he
slept. It was not a boyhood that seemed to promise much.
In spite of this hard life which he led, Charles rarely lost his love of
fun or his natural high spirits. When he was about twelve years old his
father came into a little money, which enabled him to pay his debts so
that he was released from prison. He was also able to send his son to
school. Here he quickly blossomed out into a leader among the boys. He
was continually inventing new games, and queer languages, which were
made by adding extra syllables to ordinary words. Frequently he and
several of his school friends would go out into the street and talk to
each other in this language of their own, understanding what each other
said, but pretending to be foreigners to every one who heard them.
Charles was also continually writing short stories, which he lent to his
friends on payment of marbles or slate-pencils or white mice, which the
boys were very fond of keeping in their desks. He and a few others
built a small theatre and painted gorgeous scenery for it, and then gave
regular plays, which he specially wrote for the theatre, to the great
entertainment of the other boys and the masters. This comfortable school
life was a great contrast to the hard knocks he had to endure when he
was at the blacking factory, and he flourished under its influence and
began to show something of his real talent for entertaining those about
him.
Mr. Dickens, however, soon concluded that Charles ought to be making a
start in some business, and so a few years after he had entered school
he was placed as clerk in the office of a solicitor in Lincoln's Inn.
Here he had to run errands through the busy streets of London's business
life, copy all legal documents, and answer the clients who came to call
on the firm.
The other clerks found young Dickens immensely entertaining. He could
mimic every one who called at the office, and in addition he knew the
different cockney voices of all the rabble of the London streets. He had
learnt to know the queer types of people who drifted about the river
banks and the poorer sections of the city. He knew every small
inflection of their voices and their every trick and gesture, and now he
acted them out to the great delight of the other clerks. But he could
put his powers of mimicry to greater uses. He went to the theatre,
particularly to hear Shakespeare's plays, as often as he could, and then
would repeat long passages from the plays, giving the exact voice and
manner of the leading actors. Many friends predicted that Charles would
be a great actor himself some day, and so perhaps he might had not
his interest all been drawn another way.
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS AT EIGHTEEN]
At the time he was so much charmed with the thought of becoming an actor
that he wrote to the manager of the theatre at Covent Garden, telling
him what he thought of his own gifts for the stage, and asking if he
might have an appointment. The manager wrote that they were very busy at
that time with a new play, but that he would write him soon when he
might have a chance to meet him. A little later Charles was invited to
go to the theatre and act a short piece in the presence of Charles
Kemble, a very famous actor. When the day arrived, however, he was
suffering from a very bad cold which had so swollen his throat that he
could hardly speak at all. As a result he could not go to the theatre,
and before he had another chance to try his luck he had made up his mind
that he would rather be a writer than an actor.
It did not take Charles long to realize that the law was not to his
taste. He did not like what he saw of lawyers, and was much more apt to
make fun of than to imitate them. Looking about for some more
interesting work, he took to studying short-hand in the evenings. He
found it very hard to learn, particularly as he had to dig it out of
books in the reading-room of the British Museum, but he persevered, and
finally became very skilful, so that when he was sent by one of the
newspapers to report a debate in the House of Commons he did so
extremely well that experts stated "there never was such a short-hand
writer before."
The life of a reporter had great charm for the youthful Dickens. He
liked the adventurous side of it, the chance to see strange scenes and
mix in interesting events. He had a great many strange adventures of his
own, and told later how on one occasion soon after he had become a
reporter, he was sent far out of London to take down a political speech,
and how coming back he had to write out his short-hand notes holding his
paper on the palm of his hand, and by the light of a dull, flickering
lantern, while the coach galloped at fifteen miles an hour through wild
and hilly country at midnight.
In addition to reporting speeches Charles was sent to write notices of
new plays in the theatres and also reviewed new books. He signed these
reviews with his nickname "Boz," and it was not long before these
articles by Boz attracted the attention of a great many judges of good
writing. The chief editor of the _Morning Chronicle_, for which Charles
wrote, said of the youth, "He has never been a great reader of books or
plays and knows but little of them, but has spent his time in studying
life. Keep 'Boz' in reserve for great occasions. He will aye be ready
for them."
So it proved, and he might have been a prominent newspaper man just as
he might have been a great actor had not the desire to see what he could
do with a story seized upon him.