Chapter 1

Chapter 14,307 wordsPublic domain

Produced by Mark C. Orton, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

~WEEKLY READER~

Children's Book Club

Education Center · Columbus 16, Ohio

PRESENTS

~Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance~

_by_ ~FRANCES CAVANAH~

_illustrated by_ Paula Hutchison

RAND McNALLY & COMPANY

CHICAGO · NEW YORK · SAN FRANCISCO

_This book is dedicated to my grandnephew_

~PHILIP JAN NADELMAN~

~WEEKLY READER Children's Book Club Edition, 1959~

BY RAND McNALLY & COMPANY

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

BY AMERICAN BOOK-STRATFORD PRESS, INC., N.Y.

A LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 59-5789

In writing this story of Abraham Lincoln, the author depended primarily on Lincoln's own statements and on the statements of his family and friends who had firsthand knowledge of his everyday life. In instances when dialogue had to be imagined, the conversation might logically have taken place in the light of known circumstances. Such descriptive details as were necessarily added were based on authentic accounts of pioneer times.

F.C.

There was a new boy baby at the Lincoln cabin! By cracky! thought Dennis Hanks as he hurried up the path, he was going to like having a boy cousin. They could go swimming together. Maybe they could play Indian. Dennis pushed open the cabin door.

"Where is he?" he shouted. "Where is he?"

"Sh!" A neighbor, who had come in to help, put her finger to her lips. "The baby is asleep."

Nancy Lincoln was lying on the pole bed in a corner of the one-room house. She looked very white under the dark bearskin covering, but when she heard Dennis she raised her head. "It's all right, Denny," she said. "You can see him now."

Dennis tiptoed over to the bed. A small bundle, wrapped in a homespun shawl, rested in the curve of Nancy's arm. When she pulled back the shawl, Dennis could not think of anything to say. The baby was so wrinkled and so red. It looked just like a cherry after the juice had been squeezed out.

Nancy touched one of the tiny hands with the tip of her finger. "See his wee red fists and the way he throws them around!" she said.

"What's his name?" Dennis asked at last.

"We're calling him after his grandpappy. Abraham Lincoln!"

"That great big name for that scrawny little mite?"

Nancy sounded hurt. "Give him a chance to grow, will you?"

Then she saw that Dennis was only teasing. "You wait!" she went on. "It won't be long before Abe will be running around in buckskin breeches and a coonskin cap."

"Well, maybe--"

The door opened, and Tom Lincoln, the baby's father, came in. With him was Aunt Betsy Sparrow. She kissed Nancy and carried the baby over to a stool by the fireplace. Making little cooing noises under her breath, she dressed him in a white shirt and a yellow flannel petticoat. Sally Lincoln, two years old, who did not know quite what to make of the new brother, came over and stood beside her. Dennis drew up another stool and watched.

Aunt Betsy looked across at him and smiled. Dennis, an orphan, lived with her and she knew that he was often lonely. There weren't many people living in Kentucky in the year 1809, and Dennis had no boys to play with.

"I reckon you're mighty tickled to have a new cousin," she said.

"I--I guess so," said Dennis slowly.

"Want to hold him?"

Dennis was not quite sure whether he did or not. Before he could answer, Aunt Betsy laid the baby in his arms. Sally edged closer. She started to put out her hand, but pulled it back. Abraham was so small that she was afraid to touch him.

"Don't you fret, Sally," said Dennis. "Cousin Nancy said that he is going to grow. And when he does, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to teach him to swim."

Looking down into the tiny red face, Dennis felt a sudden warm glow in his heart. "Yes, and we can go fishing down at the creek. When I go to the mill to get the corn ground, he can come along. He can ride behind me on the horse, and when it goes cloppety-clop--"

Dennis swung the baby back and forth. It puckered up its face and began to cry. Dennis caught his breath in dismay. How could such a large noise come out of such a small body?

"Here, Aunt, take him quick!"

He looked at Cousin Nancy out of the corner of his eye. "I reckon he'll never come to much."

"Now, Dennis Hanks, I want you to behave," said Aunt Betsy, but this time Nancy paid no attention to his teasing. She held out her arms for her son and cuddled him against her breast.

"As I told you," she said gaily, "you have to give him a chance to grow."

It was almost dark by the time Aunt Betsy had tidied the one-room cabin. She cooked some dried berries for Nancy, and fed Sally. Dennis begged to spend the night. After his aunt had put on her shawl and left for her own cabin, he curled up in a bearskin on the floor.

"Denny," asked Nancy, "what day is this?"

"It's Sunday--"

"I mean what day of the month."

"I don't rightly know, Cousin Nancy."

"I remember now," she went on. "It is the twelfth day of February. February 12, 1809! Little Abe's birthday!"

Outside the wind rose, whistling through the bare branches of the trees. There was a blast of cold air as the door opened. Tom came in, his arms piled high with wood. He knelt on the dirt floor to build up the fire, and the rising flames lit the log walls with a faint red glow.

"Are you glad it's a boy, Tom?" Nancy asked as he lay down beside her. "I am."

"Yes," said Tom, but when she spoke to him again, he did not answer. He was asleep. She could see his tired face in the firelight. Life had been hard for Tom; it was hard for most pioneers. She hoped that their children would have things a little easier. The baby whimpered, and she held him closer.

Denny's voice piped up: "Cousin Nancy, will Abe ever grow to be as big as me?"

"Bigger'n you are now," she told him.

"Will he grow as big as Cousin Tom?"

"Bigger'n anybody, maybe."

Nancy looked down at her son, now peacefully asleep. She made a song for him, a song so soft it was almost a whisper: "Abe--Abe," she crooned. "Abe Lincoln, you be going to grow--and grow--and grow!"

Abraham Lincoln did grow. He seemed to grow bigger every day. By the time he was seven, he was as tall as his sister, although Sally was two years older. That fall their father made a trip up to Indiana.

"Why did Pappy go so far away?" Sally asked one afternoon.

"When is he coming home?" asked Abe.

"Pretty soon, most likely."

Nancy laid down her sewing and tried to explain. Their pa had had a hard time making a living for them. He was looking for a better farm. Tom was also a carpenter. Maybe some of the new settlers who were going to Indiana to live would give him work. Anyway, he thought that poor folks were better off up there.

Abe looked surprised. He had never thought about being poor. There were so many things that he liked to do in Kentucky. He liked to go swimming with Dennis after his chores were done. There were fish to be caught and caves to explore. He and Sally had had a chance to go to school for a few weeks. Abe could write his name, just like his father. He could read much better. Tom knew a few words, but his children could read whole sentences.

Abe leaned up against his mother. "Tell us the story with our names," he begged.

Nancy put her arm around him. She often told the children stories from the Bible. One of their favorites was about Abraham and Sarah. "Now the Lord said unto Abraham," she began--and stopped to listen.

The door opened, and Tom Lincoln stood grinning down at them. "Well, folks," he said, "we're moving to Indiany."

Nancy and the children, taken by surprise, asked questions faster than Tom could answer them. He had staked out a claim about a hundred miles to the north, at a place called Pigeon Creek. He was buying the land from the government and could take his time to pay for it. He wanted to start for Indiana at once, before the weather got any colder.

It did not take long to get ready. A few possessions--a skillet, several pans, the water buckets, the fire shovel, a few clothes, a homespun blanket, a patchwork quilt, and several bearskins--were packed on the back of one of the horses. Nancy and Sally rode on the other horse. Abe and his father walked. At night they camped along the way.

When at last they reached the Ohio River, Abe stared in surprise. It was so blue, so wide, so much bigger than the creek where he and Dennis had gone swimming. There were so many boats. One of them, a long low raft, was called a ferry. The Lincolns went right on board with their pack horses, and it carried them across the shining water to the wooded shores of Indiana.

Indiana was a much wilder place than Kentucky. There was no road leading to Pigeon Creek; only a path through the forest. It was so narrow that sometimes Tom had to clear away some underbrush before they could go on. Or else he had to stop to cut down a tree that stood in their way. Abe, who was big and strong for his age, had his own little ax. He helped his father all he could.

Fourteen miles north of the river, they came to a cleared place in the forest. Tom called it his "farm." He hastily put up a shelter--a camp made of poles and brush and leaves--where they could stay until he had time to build a cabin. It had only three walls. The fourth side was left open, and in this open space Tom built a fire. The children helped their mother to unpack, and she mixed batter for cornbread in a big iron skillet. She cut up a squirrel that Tom had shot earlier in the day, and cooked it over the campfire.

"Now if you will fetch me your plates," she said, "we'll have our supper."

The plates were only slabs of bark. On each slab Nancy put a piece of fried squirrel and a hunk of cornbread. The children sank down on one of the bearskins to eat their first meal in their new home. By this time it was quite dark. They could see only a few feet beyond the circle of light made by their campfire.

Nancy shivered. She knew that they had neighbors. Tom had told her there were seven other families living at Pigeon Creek. But the trees were so tall, the night so black, that she had a strange feeling that they were the only people alive for miles around.

"Don't you like it here, Mammy?" Abe asked. To him this camping out was an adventure, but he wanted his mother to like it, too.

"I'm just feeling a little cold," she told him.

"I like it," said Sally decidedly. "But it is sort of scary. Are you scared, Abe?"

"Me?" Abe stuck out his chest. "What is there to be scared of?"

At that moment a long-drawn-out howl came from the forest. Another seemed to come from just beyond their campfire. Then another and another--each howl louder and closer. The black curtain of the night was pierced by two green spots of light. The children huddled against their mother, but Tom Lincoln laughed.

"I reckon I know what you're scared of. A wolf."

"A wolf?" Sally shrieked.

"Yep. See its green eyes. But it won't come near our fire."

He got up and threw on another log. As the flames blazed higher, the green lights disappeared. There was a crashing sound in the underbrush.

"Hear him running away? Cowardly varmint!" Tom sat down again. "No wolf will hurt us if we keep our fire going."

It was a busy winter. Abe worked side by side with his father. How that boy can chop! thought Nancy, as she heard the sound of his ax biting into wood. Tree after tree had to be cut down before crops could be planted. With the coming of spring, he helped his father to plow the stumpy ground. He learned to plow a straight furrow. He planted seeds in the furrows.

In the meantime, some of the neighbors helped Tom build a cabin. It had one room, with a tiny loft above. The floor was packed-down dirt. There were no windows. The only door was a long, up-and-down hole cut in one wall and covered by a bearskin. But Tom had made a table and several three-legged stools, and there was a pole bed in one corner. Nancy was glad to be living in a real house again, and she kept it neat and clean.

She was no longer lonely. Aunt Betsy and her husband, Uncle Thomas, brought Dennis with them from Kentucky to live in the shelter near the Lincoln cabin. Several other new settlers arrived, settlers with children. A schoolmaster, Andrew Crawford, decided to start a school.

"Maybe you'll have a chance to go, Abe," Nancy told him. "You know what the schoolmaster down in Kentucky said. He said you were a learner."

Abe looked up at her and smiled. He was going to like living in Indiana!

But sad days were coming to Pigeon Creek. There was a terrible sickness. Aunt Betsy and Uncle Thomas died, and Dennis came to live with the Lincolns. Then Nancy was taken ill. After she died, her family felt that nothing would ever be the same again.

Sally tried to keep house, but she was only twelve. The one little room and the loft above looked dirtier and more and more gloomy as the weeks went by. Sally found that cooking for four people was not easy. The smoke from the fireplace got into her eyes. Some days Tom brought home a rabbit or a squirrel for her to fry. On other days, it was too cold to go hunting. Then there was only cornbread to eat and Sally's cornbread wasn't very good.

It was hard to know who missed Nancy more--Tom or the children. He sat around the cabin looking cross and glum. The ground was frozen, so very little work could be done on the farm. He decided, when Andrew Crawford started his school, that Abe and Sally might as well go. There was nothing else for them to do, and Nancy would have wanted it.

For the first time since his mother's death Abe seemed to cheer up. Every morning, except when there were chores to do at home, he and Sally took a path through the woods to the log schoolhouse. Master Crawford kept a "blab" school. The "scholars," as he called his pupils, studied their lessons out loud. The louder they shouted, the better he liked it. If a scholar didn't know his lesson, he had to stand in the corner with a long pointed cap on his head. This was called a dunce cap.

One boy who never had to wear a dunce cap was Abe Lincoln. He was too smart. His side won nearly every spelling match. He was good at figuring, and he had the best handwriting of anyone at school. Master Crawford taught reading from the Bible, but he had several other books from which he read aloud. Among Abe's favorite stories were the ones about some wise animals that talked. They were by a man named Aesop who had lived hundreds of years before.

Abe even made up compositions of his own. He called them "sentences." One day he found some of the boys being cruel to a terrapin, or turtle. He made them stop. Then he wrote a composition in which he said that animals had feelings the same as folks.

Sometimes Abe's sentences rhymed. There was one rhyme that the children thought was a great joke:

"Abe Lincoln, his hand and pen, He will be good, but God knows when."

"That Abe Lincoln is funny enough to make a cat laugh," they said.

They always had a good time watching Abe during the class in "Manners." Once a week Master Crawford had them practice being ladies and gentlemen. One scholar would pretend to be a stranger who had just arrived in Pigeon Creek. He would leave the schoolhouse, come back, and knock at the door. Another scholar would greet "the stranger," lead him around the room, and introduce him.

One day it was Abe's turn to do the introducing. He opened the door to find his best friend, Nat Grigsby, waiting outside. Nat bowed low, from the waist. Abe bowed. His buckskin trousers, already too short, slipped up still farther, showing several inches of his bare leg. He looked so solemn that some of the girls giggled. The schoolmaster frowned and pounded on his desk. The giggling stopped.

"Master Crawford," said Abe, "this here is Mr. Grigsby. His pa just moved to these parts. He figures on coming to your school."

Andrew Crawford rose and bowed. "Welcome," he said. "Mr. Lincoln, introduce Mr. Grigsby to the other scholars."

The children sat on two long benches made of split logs. Abe led Nat down the length of the front bench. Each girl rose and made a curtsy. Nat bowed. Each boy rose and bowed. Nat returned the bow. Abe kept saying funny things under his breath that the schoolmaster could not hear. But the children heard, and they could hardly keep from laughing out loud.

Sally sat on the second bench. "Mrs. Lincoln," said Abe in a high falsetto voice, "this here be Mr. Grigsby."

While she was making her curtsy, Sally's cheeks suddenly grew red. "Don't let on I told you, Mr. Grigsby," Abe whispered, "but Mrs. Lincoln bakes the worst cornbread of anyone in Pigeon Creek."

Sally forgot that they were having a lesson in manners. "Don't you dare talk about my cornbread," she said angrily.

The little log room rocked with laughter. This time Master Crawford had also heard Abe's remark. He walked over to the corner where he kept a bundle of switches. He picked one up and laid it across his desk.

"We'll have no more monkeyshines," he said severely. "Go on with the introducing."

One day Abe almost got into real trouble. He had started for school early, as he often did, so that he could read one of Master Crawford's books. He was feeling sad as he walked through the woods; he seemed to miss his mother more each day. When he went into the schoolhouse, he looked up and saw a pair of deer antlers. Master Crawford had gone hunting. He had shot a deer and nailed the antlers above the door.

What a wonderful place to swing! thought Abe. He leaped up and caught hold of the prongs. He began swinging back and forth.

CRASH! One prong came off in his hand, and he fell to the floor. He hurried to his seat, hoping that the master would not notice.

But Master Crawford was proud of those antlers. When he saw what had happened, he picked up the switch on his desk. It made a swishing sound as he swung it back and forth.

"Who broke my deer antlers?" he shouted.

No one answered. Abe hunched down as far as he could on the bench. He seemed to be trying to hide inside his buckskin shirt.

Master Crawford repeated his question. "Who broke my deer antlers? I aim to find out, if I have to thrash every scholar in this school."

All of the children looked scared, Abe most of all. But he stood up. He marched up to Master Crawford's desk and held out the broken prong that he had been hiding in his hand.

"I did it, sir," he said. "I didn't mean to do it, but I hung on the antlers and they broke. I wouldn't have done it, if I had thought they'd a broke."

The other scholars thought that Abe would get a licking. Instead, Master Crawford told him to stay in after school. They had a long talk. He liked Abe's honesty in owning up to what he had done. He knew how much he missed his mother. Perhaps he understood that sometimes a boy "cuts up" to try to forget how sad he feels.

Abe felt sadder than ever after Master Crawford moved away from Pigeon Creek. Then Tom Lincoln left. One morning he rode off on horseback without telling anyone where he was going. Several days went by. Even easy-going Dennis was worried when Tom did not return.

Abe did most of the chores. In the evening he practiced his sums. Master Crawford had taught him to do easy problems in arithmetic, and he did not want to forget what he had learned. He had no pen, no ink, not even a piece of paper. He took a burnt stick from the fireplace and worked his sums on a flat board.

He wished that he had a book to read. Instead, he tried to remember the stories that the schoolmaster had told. He repeated them to Sally and Dennis, as they huddled close to the fire to keep warm. He said them again to himself after he went to bed in the loft.

There were words in some of the stories that Abe did not understand. He tried to figure out what the words meant. He thought about the people in the stories. He thought about the places mentioned and wondered what they were like.

There were thoughts inside Abraham Lincoln's head that even Sally did not know anything about.

Abe took another bite of cornbread and swallowed hard. "Don't you like it?" asked Sally anxiously. "I know it doesn't taste like the cornbread Mammy used to make."

She looked around the room. The furniture was the same as their mother had used--a homemade table and a few three-legged stools. The same bearskin hung before the hole in the wall that was their only door. But Nancy had kept the cabin clean. She had known how to build a fire that didn't smoke. Sally glanced down at her faded linsey-woolsey dress, soiled with soot. The dirt floor felt cold to her bare feet. Her last pair of moccasins had worn out weeks ago.

"I don't mind the cornbread--at least, not much." Abe finished his piece, down to the last crumb. "If I seem down in the mouth, Sally, it is just because--"

He walked over to the fireplace, where he stood with his back to the room.

"He misses Nancy," said Dennis bluntly, "the same as the rest of us. Then Tom has been gone for quite a spell."

Sally put her hand on Abe's shoulder. "I'm scared. Do you reckon something has happened to Pappy? Isn't he ever coming back?"

Abe stared into the fire. He was thinking of the wolves and panthers loose in the woods. There were many dangers for a man riding alone over the rough forest paths. The boy wanted to say something to comfort Sally, but he had to tell the truth. "I don't know, I--"

He stopped to listen. Few travelers passed by their cabin in the winter, but he was sure that he heard a faint noise in the distance. It sounded like the creak of wheels. The noise came again--this time much closer. A man's voice was shouting: "Get-up! Get-up!"

"Maybe it's Pappy!" Abe pushed aside the bearskin and rushed outside. Sally and Dennis were right behind him.

"It _is_ Pappy," Sally cried. "But look--"

Tom Lincoln had left Pigeon Creek on horseback. He was returning in a wagon drawn by four horses. He was not alone. A strange woman sat beside him, holding a small boy in her lap. Two girls, one about Sally's age, the other about eight, stood behind her. The wagon was piled high with furniture--more furniture than the Lincoln children had ever seen.

"Whoa, there!" Tom Lincoln pulled at the reins and brought the wagon to a stop before the door.

"Here we are, Sarah." He jumped down and held out his hand to help the woman.

She was very neat looking, tall and straight, with neat little curls showing at the edge of her brown hood. She said, "Tsch! Tsch!" when she saw Tom's children. She stared at their soiled clothing, their matted hair, their faces smudged with soot. "Tsch! Tsch!" she said again, and Abe felt hot all over in spite of the cold wind. He dug the toe of his moccasin into the frozen ground.

"Abe! Sally!" their father said. "I've brought you a new mammy. This here is the Widow Johnston. That is, she was the Widow Johnston." He cleared his throat. "She is Mrs. Lincoln now. I've been back to Kentucky to get myself a wife."

"Howdy!" The new Mrs. Lincoln was trying to sound cheerful. She beckoned to the children in the wagon. They jumped down and stood beside her. "These here are my young ones," she went on. "The big gal is Betsy. The other one is Mathilda. This little shaver is Johnny."