In The Boyhood of Lincoln Part 5

Ah, fool! to exult in a glory so vain!

"'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more: I mourn; but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you; For morn is approaching, your charms to restore, Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glitt'ring with dew.

Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn; Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save: But when shall spring visit the moldering urn?

Oh, when shall day dawn on the night of the grave?

"'Twas thus by the glare of false science betrayed, That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind; My thoughts wont to roam, from shade onward to shade, Destruction before me, and sorrow behind.

'Oh pity, great Father of light,' then I cried, 'Thy creature who fain would not wander from thee!

Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride: From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free.'

"And darkness and doubt are now flying away; No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn: So breaks on the traveler, faint and astray, The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn.

See truth, love, and mercy, in triumph descending, And Nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom!

On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are blending, And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb."

Mrs. Lincoln used to listen to such recitations as this from the English Readers and Kentucky Orators with delight and wonder. She loved the boy with all her heart. In all the biographies of Lincoln there is hardly a more pathetic incident than one told by Mr. Herndon of his visit to Mrs.

Lincoln after the a.s.sa.s.sination and the national funeral. Mr. Herndon was the law partner of Lincoln for many years, and we give the incident here, out of place as it is. Mrs. Lincoln said to her step-son's friend:

"Abe was a poor boy, and I can say what scarcely one woman--a mother--can say, in a thousand: Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life.... His mind and my mind--what little I had--seemed to run together.... He was here after he was elected President." Here she stopped, unable to proceed any further, and after her grateful emotions had spent themselves in tears, she proceeded: "He was dutiful to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys; but I must say, both being now dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect to see. I wish I had died when my husband died. I did not want Abe to run for President, did not want him elected; was afraid, somehow--felt it in my heart; and when he came down to see me, after he was elected President, I felt that something would befall him, and that I should see him no more."

Equally beautiful was the scene when Lincoln visited this good woman for the last time, just before going to Was.h.i.+ngton to be inaugurated President.

"Abraham," she said, as she stood in her humble backwoods cabin, "something tells me that I shall never see you again."

He put his hand around her neck, lifted her face to heaven and said, "Mother!"

CHAPTER III.

THE OLD BLACKSMITH'S SHOP AND THE MERRY STORY-TELLERS.

_JOHNNIE KONGAPOD'S INCREDIBLE STORY._

The country store, in most new settlements, is the resort of story-tellers. It was not so here. There was a log blacksmith-shop by the wayside near the Gentryville store, overspread by the cool boughs of pleasant trees, and having a glowing forge and wide-open doors, which was a favorite resort of the good-humored people of Spencer County, and here anecdotes and stories used to be told which Abraham Lincoln in his political life made famous. The merry pioneers little thought that their rude stories would ever be told at great political meetings, to generals and statesmen, and help to make clear practical thought to Legislatures, senates, and councils of war. Abraham Lincoln claimed that he obtained his education by learning all that he could of any one who could teach him anything. In all the curious stories told in his hearing in this quaint Indiana smithy, he read some lesson of life.

The old blacksmith was a natural story-teller. Young Lincoln liked to warm himself by the forge in winter and sun himself in the open door in summer, and tempt this sinewy man to talk. The smithy was a common resort of Thomas Lincoln, and of John and Dennis Hanks, who belonged to the family of Abraham's mother. The schoolmaster must have liked the place, and the traveling ministers tarried long there when they brought their horses to be shod. In fact, the news-stand of that day, the literary club, the lecture platform, the place of amus.e.m.e.nt, and everything that stirred a.s.sociated life, found its common center in this rude old smithy by the wayside, amid the running brooks and fanning trees.

The stories told here were the curious incidents and adventures of pioneer life, rude in fact and rough in language, but having pith and point.

Thomas Lincoln, on the afternoon of the next day, said to Jasper:

"Come, preacher, let's go over to the smithy. I want ye to see the blacksmith. We all like to see the blacksmith in these parts; he's an uncommon man."

They went to the smithy. Abraham followed them. The forge was low, and the blacksmith was hammering over old nails on the anvil.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Thomas Lincoln; "not doin' much to-day. I brought the preacher over to call on you--he's a Tunker--has been to see the school--he teaches himself--thought you'd want to know him."

"Glad you come. Here, sit down in the leather chair, and make yourself at home. Been long in these new parts?"

"No, my friend; I have been to Illinois, but I have never been here before. I am glad to see you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: STORY-TELLING AT THE SMITHY.]

"What do you think of the country?" said the blacksmith. "Think it is a good place to settle in? Hope that you have come to cast your lot with us. We need a preacher; we haven't any goodness to spare. You come from foreign parts, I take it. Well, well, there's room for a world of people out here in the woods and prairies. I hope that you will like it, and get your folks to come. We'll do all we can for you. We be men of good will, if we be hard-looking and poor."

"My good friend, I believe you. You are great-hearted men, and I like you."

"Brainy, too. Let me start up the forge."

"Preacher, come here," said Thomas Lincoln. "I haven't had no edication to speak of, but I've invented a new system of book-keepin' that beats the schools. There's one of them there. The blacksmith keeps all of his accounts by it. I've got one on a puncheon at home; did you notice it?

This is how it is; you may want to use it yourself. Come and look at it."

On a rough board over the forge Thomas Lincoln had drawn a number of straight lines with a coal, as are sometimes put on a blackboard by a singing-master. On the lower bars were several cloudy erasures, and at the end of these bars were initials.

"Don't understand it, do you? Well, now, it is perfectly simple. I taught it to Aunt Olive, and she don't know more than some whole families, though she thinks that she knows more than the whole creation.

Seen such people, hain't ye? Yes. The woods are full of 'em. Well, that ain't neither here nor there. This is how it works: A man comes here to have his horse shod--minister, may be; short, don't pay. Nothin' to pay with but funeral sermons, and you can't collect them all the time. Well, all you have to do is just to draw your finger across one of them lines, and write his initials after it. And when he comes again, rub out another place on the same lines."

"And when you have rubbed out all the places you could along that line, how much would you be worth?" said the blacksmith.

"I call that a new way of keeping accounts," continued Thomas Lincoln, earnestly. "Did you ever see anything of the kind before? No. It's a new and original way. We do a great lot o' thinkin' down here in winter-time, when we haven't much else to do. I'm goin' to put one o'

them new systems into the mill."

The meetings of the pioneers at the blacksmith's shop formed a kind of merry-go-round club. One would tell a story in his own odd way, and another would say, "That reminds me," and tell a similar story that was intended to exceed the first in point of humor. One of Thomas Lincoln's favorite stories was "GL-UK!" or, as he sometimes termed it--

"_HOW ABRAHAM WENT TO MILL._

"It was a mighty curi's happenin'," he would say. "I don't know how to account for it--the human mind is a very strange thing. We go to sleep and are lost to the world entirely, and we wake up again. We die, and leave our bodies, and the soul-memory wakes again; if it have the new life and sense, it wakes again somewhere. We're curi's critters, all on us, and don't know what we are.

"When I first came to Indiana I made a mill of my own--Abe and I did.

'Twas just a big stone attached to a heavy pole like a well-sweep, so as to pound heavy, up and down, up and down. You can see it now, though it is all out of gear and kilter.

"Then, they built a mill 'way down on the river, and I used to send Abe there on horseback. Took him all day to go and come: used to start early in the mornin', and, as he had to wait his turn at the mill, he didn't use to get back until sundown. Then came Gordon and built his mill almost right here among us--a horse-mill with a windla.s.s, all mighty handy: just hitch the horse to a windla.s.s and pole, and he goes round and round, and never gets nowhere, but he grinds the corn and wheat.

Something like me: I go round and round, and never seem to get anywhere, but something will come of it, you may depend.

"Well, one day I says to Abraham:

"You must hitch up the horse and go to Gordon's to mill. The meal-tub is low, and there's a storm a-brewin'.'

"So Abe hitched up the horse and started. That horse is a mighty steady animal--goes around just like a machine; hasn't any capers nor antics--just as sober as a minister. I should have no more thought of his kickin' than I should have thought of the millstones a-hoppin' out of the hopper. 'Twas a mighty curi's affair.

"Well, Abe went to Gordon's, and his turn come to grind. He hitched the horse to the pole, and said, as always, 'Get up, you old jade!' I always say that, so Abe does. He didn't mean any disrespect to the horse, who always maintained a very respectable-like character up to that day.

"The horse went round and round, round and round, just as steady as clock-work, until the grist was nearly out, and the sound of the grindin' was low, when he began to lag, sleepy-like. Abe he run up behind him, and said, 'Get up, you old jade!' then puckered up his mouth, so, to say 'Gluck.' 'Tis a word I taught him to use. Every one has his own horse-talk.

"He waved his stick, and said 'Gl--'

"Was the horse bewildered? He never did such a thing before. In an instant, like a thunder-clap when the sun was s.h.i.+nin', he h'isted up his heels and kicked Abraham in the head, and knocked him over on the ground, and then stopped as though to think on what he had done.