CHAPTER XX

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."