In The Boyhood of Lincoln Part 9

It was one of the cruel sports of the boys, at the noonings and recesses of the school, to put coals of fire on the backs of wandering terrapins, and to joke at the struggles of the poor creatures to get to their homes in the ponds.

Abraham Lincoln from a boy had a tender heart, a horror of cruelty and of everything that would cause any creature pain. He was merciful to every one but the unmerciful, and charitable to every one but the uncharitable, and kind to everyone but the unkind. But his nature made war at once on any one who sought to injure another, and he was especially severe on any one who was so mean and cowardly as to disregard the natural rights of a dumb animal or reptile. He had in this respect the sensitiveness of a Burns. All great natures, as biography everywhere attests, have fine instincts--this chivalrous sympathy for the brute creation.

Lincoln's nature was that of a champion for the right. He was a born knight, and, strangely enough, his first battles in life were in defense of the turtles or terrapins. He was a boy of powerful strength, and he used it roughly to maintain his cause. He is said to have once exclaimed that the turtles were his brothers.

The early days of spring in the old forests are full of life. The Sun seems to be calling forth his children. The ponds become margined with green, and new creatures everywhere stir the earth and the waters. Life and matter become, as it were, a new creation, and one can believe anything when he sees how many forms life and matter can a.s.sume under the mellowing rays of the sun. The clod becomes a flower; the egg a reptile, fish, or bird. The cunning woodchuck, that looks out of his hole on the awakening earth and blue sky, seems almost to have a sense of the miracle that has been wrought. The boy who throws a stone at him, to drive him back into the earth, seems less sensible of nature than he.

It is a pleasing sight to see the little creature, as he stands on his haunches, wondering, and the brain of a young Webster would naturally seek to let such a groundling have all his right of birth.

One day, when the blue spring skies were beginning to glow, Abraham went out to play with his companions. It was one of his favorite amus.e.m.e.nts to declaim from a stump. He would sometimes in this way recite long selections from the school Reader and Speaker.

He had written a composition at school on the defense of the rights of dumb animals, and there was one piece in the school Reader in which he must have found a sympathetic chord, and which was probably one of those that he loved to recite. It was written by the sad poet Cowper, and began thus:

"I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

An inadvertent step may crush the snail, That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live."

As Abraham and his companions were playing in the warm sun, one said:

"Make a speech for us, Abe. Hip, hurrah! You've only to nibble a pen to make poetry, and only to mount a stump to be a speaker. Now, Abe, speak for the cause of the people, or anybody's cause. Give it to us strong, and we will do the cheering."

Abraham mounted a stump in the school-grounds, on which he had often declaimed before. He felt something stirring within him, half-fledged wings of his soul, that waited a cause. He would imitate the few preachers and speakers that he had heard--even an old Kentucky preacher named Elkins, whom his own mother had loved, and whose teachings the good woman had followed in her short and melancholy life.

He began his speech, throwing up his long arms, and lifting at proper periods his c.o.o.n-skin cap. The scholars cheered as he waxed earnest. In the midst of the speech a turtle came creeping into the grounds.

"h.e.l.lo!" said one of the boys, "here's another turtle come to school!

He, too, has seen the need of learning."

The terrapin crawled along awkwardly toward the house, his head protruding from his sh.e.l.l, and his tail moving to and fro.

At this point young Abraham grew loud and dramatic. The boys raised a shout, and the girls waved their hoods.

In the midst of the enthusiasm, one of the boys seized the turtle by the tail and slung it around his head, as an evidence of his delight at the ardor of the speaker.

"Throw it at him," said one of the scholars. "Johnson once threw a turtle at him, when he was preachin' to his sister, and it set him to runnin' on like a minister."

Abraham was accustomed to preach to the young members of his family. He would do the preaching, and his sister the weeping; and he sometimes became so much affected by his own discourses that he would weep with her, and they would have a very "moving service," as such a scene was called.

The boy swung the turtle over his head again, and at last let go of it in the air, so as to project it toward Abraham.

The poor reptile fell crushed at the foot of the stump and writhed in pain.

Abraham ceased to speak. He looked down on the pitiful sight of suffering, and his heart yearned over the helpless creature, and then his brain became fired, and his eyes flashed with rage.

"Who did that?" he exclaimed. "Brute! coward! wretch!" He looked down again, and saw the reptile trying to move away with its broken sh.e.l.l.

His anger turned to pity. He began to expostulate against all such heartlessness to the animal world as the scene exhibited before him. The poor turtle again tried to move away, his head just protruding, looking for some way out of the world that would deny him his right to the suns.h.i.+ne and the streams. The young orator saw it all; his lip curled bitterly, and his words burned. He awakened such a sympathy for the reptile, and such a feeling of resentment against the hand which had ruined this little life, that the offender shrank away from the scene, calling out defiantly:

"Come away, and let him talk. He's only chicken-hearted."

The scholars knew that there was no cowardice in the heart of Lincoln.

They felt the force of the scene. The boys and girls of Andrew Crawford's school never forgot the pleas that Abraham used to make for the animals and reptiles of the woods and streams.

Nearly every youth exhibits his leading trait or characteristic in his school-days.

"The tenor of our whole lives," said an English poet, "is what we make it in the first five years after we become our masters"; and a wiser than he has said, "The thing that has been is, and G.o.d requireth the past." Columbus on the quays of Genoa; Zinzendorf forming among his little companions the order of the "Grain of Mustard-Seed"; the poets who "lisped in numbers"; the boy statesmans.h.i.+p of Cromwell; and the early aspiration of nearly every great leader of mankind--all showed the current of the life-stream, and it is the current alone that knows and prophesies the future. When Abraham Lincoln fell, the world uncovered its head. Thrones were sorrowful, and humanity wept. Yet his earliest rostrum was a stump, and his cause the natural rights of the voiceless inhabitants of the woods and streams. The heart that throbbed for humanity, and that won the heart of the world, found its first utterance in defense of the principles of the birds'-nest commandment. It was a beginning of self-education worthy of the thought of a Pestalozzi. It was a prophecy.

As the young advocate of the rights and feelings of the dumb creation was ending his fiery discourse, the b.u.t.tonless Tunker, himself a disciple of Pestalozzi, came into the school-grounds and read the meaning of the scene. Jasper saw the soul of things, and turned always from the outward expressions of life to the inward motive. He read the true character of the boy in buckskin breeches, human heart, and fluent tongue. He sat down on the log step of the school-house in silence, and Mr. Crawford presently came out with a quill pen behind his ear, and sat down beside him.

"That boy has been teaching what you and I ought first to teach," said Jasper.

"What is that?" asked Mr. Crawford.

"The heart! What is head-learning worth, if the heart is left uneducated? As Pestalozzi used to say, The soul is the true end of all education. Religion itself is a failure, without right character."

"But you wouldn't teach morals as a science, would you?"

"I would train the heart to feel, and the soul to love to be just and do right, and make obedience to the moral sense the habit of life. This can best be done at the school age, and I tell you that this is the highest education. A boy who can spell all the words in the spelling-book, and bound all the countries in the world, and repeat all the dates of history, and yet who could have the heart to crush a turtle, has not been properly educated."

"Then your view is that the end of education is to make a young person do right?"

"No, my good friend, pardon me if I speak plain. The end of education is not to _make_ young people do right, but to train the young heart to love to do right; to make right doing the nature and habit of life."

"How would you begin?"

"As that boy has begun. He has made every heart on the ground feel for that broken-sh.e.l.led turtle. That boy will one day become a leader among men. He has a heart. The head may make friends, but only the heart can hold them. It is the heart-power that serves and rules. The best thing that can be said of any one is, 'He is true-hearted.' I like that boy.

He is true-hearted. His first client a turtle, it may not be his last.

Train him well. He will honor you some day."

The boys took the turtle to the pond and left him on the bank. Jasper watched them. He then turned to the backwoods teacher, and said:

"That, sir, is the result of right education. First teach character; second, life; third, books. Let education begin in the heart, and everybody made to feel that right makes might."

CHAPTER V.

JASPER COBBLES FOR AUNT OLIVE.--HER QUEER STORIES.

Aunt Olive Eastman had made herself a relative to every one living between the two Pigeon Creeks. She had formed this large acquaintance with the pioneers by attending the camp-meetings of the Methodists and the four-days' meetings of the Baptists in southern Indiana, and the school-house meetings everywhere. She was a widow, was full of rude energy and benevolence, had a sharp tongue, a kindly heart, and a measure of good sense. But she was "far from perfect," as she used to very humbly acknowledge in the many pioneer meetings that she attended.

"I make mistakes sometimes," she used to say, "and it is because I am a fallible creatur'."

She was an always busy woman, and the text of her life was "Work," and her practice was in harmony with her teaching.

"Work, work, my friends and brethren," she once said in the log school-house meeting. "Work while the day is pa.s.sin'. We's all children of the clay. To-day we're here smart as pepper-gra.s.s, and to-morrer we're gone like the cuc.u.mbers of the ground. Up, and be doin'--up, and be doin'!"

One morning Jasper the Tunker appeared in the clearing before her cabin. She stood in the door as he appeared, shading her eyes with one hand and holding a birch broom in the other. The sunset was flooding the swollen creek in the distance, and s.h.i.+mmering in the tops of the ancient trees. Jasper turned to the door.

"This is a lovely morning," said he. "The heavens are blue above us. I hope that you are well."