THOMAS LINCOLN MOVES

Jasper taught school for a time in Boonesville, Indiana, and preached in the new settlements along the Wabash. While at Boonesville, he chanced to meet young Lincoln at the court house, under circumstances that filled his heart with pity.

It was at a trial for murder that greatly excited the people. The lawyer for the defense was John Breckinridge, a man of great reputation and ability.

Jasper saw young Lincoln among the people who had come to hear the great lawyer’s plea, and said to him:

“You have traveled a long distance to be here to-day.”

“Yes,” said the tall young man. “There is nothing that leads one to seek information of the most intelligent people like a debating society. We, who used to meet to discuss questions at Jones’s store, have formed a debating society, and I want to learn all I can of law for the sake of justice, and I owed it to myself and the society not to let this great occasion pass. I have walked fifteen miles to be here to-day. Did you know that father was thinking of moving to Illinois?”

“No. Will you go with him?”

“Yes, I shall go with him and see him well settled, and then I shall strike out for myself in the world. Father hasn’t the faculty that mother has, you know. I can do some things better than he, and it is the duty of one member of the family to make up when he can for what another member lacks. We all have our own gifts, and should share them with others. I can split rails faster than father can, and do better work at house-building than he, and I am going with him and do for him the best I can at the start. I shall seek first for a roof for him, and then a place for myself.”

The great lawyer arrived. The doors of the court-house were open, and the people filled the court-room.

The plea was a masterly one, eloquent and dramatic, and it thrilled the young soul of Lincoln. Full of the subject, the young debater sought Mr. Breckinridge after the court adjourned, and extended his long arm and hand to him.

The orator was a proud man of an aristocratic family, and thought it the proper thing to maintain his dignity on all occasions. He looked at the boy haughtily, and refused to take his hand.

“I thank you,” said Lincoln. “I wish to express my gratitude.”

“Sir!”

With a contemptuous look Breckinridge passed by, and the slight filled the heart of the young man with disappointment and mortification. The two met again in Washington in 1862. The backwoods boy whose hand the orator had refused to take had become President of the United States. He extended his hand, and it was accepted.

“Sir,” said the President, “that plea of yours in Boonesville, Indiana, was one of the best that I ever heard.”

“In Boonesville, Indiana?”

How like a dream to the haughty lawyer the recollection must have been! Such things as this hurt Lincoln to the quick. He was so low-spirited at times in his early manhood that he did not dare to carry with him a pocket-knife, lest he should be overcome in some dark and evil moment to end his own life. There were times when his tendencies were so alarming that he had to be watched by his friends. But these dark periods were followed by a great flow of spirits and the buoyancy of hope.

In the spring of 1830, Jasper and Waubeno came to Gentryville, and there met James Gentry, the leading man of the place.

“Are the Linkens still living in Spencer County?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Gentry, “but it has been a hard winter here, and they are about to move. The milk sickness has been here again and has carried off the cattle, and the people have become discouraged, and look upon the place as unhealthy. I have bought Thomas Linken’s property. The man was here this morning. You will find him getting ready to go away from Indiana for good and all.”

“Where is he going?” asked Jasper.

“Off to Illinois.”

“So I thought,” said Jasper. “I must go to see him. How is that bright boy of his?”

“Abe?”

“Yes. I like that boy. I am drawn toward him. There is something about him that doesn’t belong to many people a spiritual graft that won’t bear any common fruit. I can see it with my spiritual eye, in the open vision, as it were. You don’t understand those things I see you don’t. I must see him. There are not many like him in soul, if he is ungainly in body. I believe that he is born to some higher destiny than other men. I see that you do not understand me. Time will make it plain.”

“I’m a trader, and no prophet, and I don’t know much about such matters as these. But Abe Linken, he’s grown up now, and up it is, more than six feet tall. He’s a giant, a great, ungainly, awkward, clever, honest fellow, full of jokes and stories, though down at times, and he wouldn’t do a wrong thing if it were for his right hand, and couldn’t do an unkind one. He comes up to the store here often and tells stories, and sometimes stays until almost midnight, just as he used to do at Jones’s. Everybody likes him here, and we shall all miss him when he goes away.”

Jasper and Waubeno left the little Indiana town, and went toward the cabin of the Lincolns. On the way Jasper turned aside to pay a short visit to Aunt Olive.

The busy woman saw the preacher from her door, and came out to welcome him.

“I knew it was you,” was her salutation, “and I am right glad that you have come. It has been distressin’ times in these parts. Folks have died, and cattle have died, and we’re all poor enough now, ye may depend. Where are ye goin’?”

“To see the Lincolns.”

“Sho’! goin’ to see them again. Well, ye’re none too soon. They’re gettin’ ready to move to Illinois. Thomas Linken’s always movin.’ Moved four times or more already, and I ‘magine he’ll just keep movin’ till he moves into his grave, and stops for good. He just lives up in the air, that man does. He always is imaginin’ that it rains gold in the next State or county, but it never rains anythin’ but rain where he is; and if it rained puddin’ and sugar-cane, his dish would be bottom upward, sure. Elder, what does make ye take such an interest in that there family?”

“Mrs. Lincoln is a very good woman, an uncommon one; and Abraham ”

“Yes, elder, I knew ye were goin’ to say somethin’ good of Abraham. Yer heart is just set on that boy. I could see it when ye were here. I remember all that ye prophesied about him. I ain’t forgot it. Well, I am a very plain-spoken woman. Ye ain’t much of a prophet, in my opinion. He hain’t got anywhere yet now, has he? He’s just a great, tall, black, jokin’ boy; awful lazy, always readin’ and talkin’; tellin’ stories and makin’ people laugh, with his own mind as blue as my indigo-bag behind it all. That is just what he is, elder, and he’ll never amount to anythin’ in this world or any other. It’s all just as I told ye it would be. There, now, elder, that’s as true as preachin’, and the plain facts of the case. You wait and see. Time tells the truth.”

“His opportunity is yet to come; and when it does, he will have the heart and mind to fill it,” said Jasper. “A soul that is true to what is best in life, becomes a power among men at last it is spiritual gravitation. ’Tis current leads the river. You do not see.”

“No, I do not understand any such things as those; but when you’ve been over to see the Linkens, you come back here, and I’ll make ye some more doughnuts. Come back, won’t ye, and bring yer Indian boy? I’m a plain woman, and live all alone, and I do love to hear ye talk. It gives me somethin’ to think about after ye’re gone; and there ain’t many preachers that visit these parts.”

Jasper moved on under the great trees, and came to the simple Lincoln cabin.

“You have come back, elder,” said Thomas Lincoln. “Travelin’ with your Indian boy? I’m glad to see you, though we are very poor now. We’re goin’ to move away we and some other families. We’re all off to Illinois. You’ve traveled over that kentry, preacher?”

“Yes, I’ve been there.”

“Well, what do you think of the kentry?”

“It is a wonderful country, Mr. Lincoln. It can produce grain enough to feed the world. The earth grows gold. It will some day uplift cities it will be rich and happy. I like the prairie country well.”

“There! let me tell my wife. Mother, here’s the preacher. What do you think he says about the prairie kentry? Says the earth grows gold.”

Poor Mrs. Lincoln looked sad and doubtful. She had heard such things before. But she welcomed Jasper heartily, and the three, with Waubeno, sat down to a meal of plain Indian pudding and milk, and talked of the sorrowful winter that had passed and the prospects of a better life amid the flowery prairies of Illinois.

A little dog played around them while they were thus eating and talking.

“It is not our dog,” said Mrs. Lincoln, “but he has taken a great liking to Abraham. The boy is away now, but he will be back by sundown. The dog belongs to one of the family, and is always restless when Abraham has gone away. Abraham wants to take him along with us, but it seems to me that we’ve got enough mouths to feed without him. We are all so poor! and I don’t see what good he would do. But if Abraham says so, he will have to go.”

“How is Abraham?” asked Jasper.

“Oh, he is well, and as good to me as ever, and he studies hard, just as he used to do.”

“And is as lazy as ever,” said Thomas Lincoln. “At the lazy folks’ fair he’d take the premium.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” said Mrs. Lincoln. “Just think how good he was to everybody during the sickness! He never thought of himself, but just worked night and day. His own mother died of the same sickness years ago, and he’s had a feelin’ heart for the sufferers in this calamity. I tell you, elder, that he’s good to everybody, and if he does not take hold to work in the way that father does, his head and heart are never idle. I am sorry that he and father do not see more alike. The boy is goin’ to do well in the world. He begins right.”

When Abraham returned, there was one heart that was indeed glad to see him. It was the little dog. The animal bounded heels over head as soon as he heard the boy’s step, and almost leaped upon his tall shoulder as he met him.

“Humph!” said Mr. Lincoln.

“Animals know who are good to them,” said Mrs. Lincoln. “Abraham, here is the preacher.”

How tall, and dark, and droll, and yet how sad, the boy looked! He was full grown now, uncouth and ungainly. Who but Jasper would have seen behind the features of that young, sinewy backwoodsman the soul of the leader and liberator?

It was a busy time with the Lincolns. Their goods were loaded upon a rude and very heavy ox-wagon, and the oxen were given into the charge of young Abraham to drive.

The young man’s voice might have been heard a mile as he swung his whip and called out to the oxen on starting. They passed by the grave under the great trees where his poor mother’s body lay and left it there, never to be visited again. There were some thirteen persons in the emigrant party.

Emigrant wagons were passing toward Illinois, the “prairie country,” as it was called, over all the roads of Indiana. The “schooners,” as these wagons were called, were everywhere to be seen on the great prairie sea. It was the time of the great emigration. Jasper had never dreamed of a life like this before. He looked into one prairie wagon, whose young driver had gone for water. He turned to Waubeno, and said:

“What do you think I saw?”

“Guns to destroy the Indians; trinkets and trifles to cheat us out of our lands; whisky for tent-making.”

“No, Waubeno. There was an old grandmother there, a sick woman, and a little coffin. This is a sad world sometimes. I pity everybody, and I would that all men were brothers. Go, look into the wagon, Waubeno.”

The Indian went, and soon returned.

“Do you pity them, Waubeno?”

“Yes; but ”

“What, Waubeno?”

“I pity the Indian mother too. Your people drove her from her corn-fields at Rock Island, and she left the graves of her children behind her.”

There was a shadow of sadness in the hearts of the Lincoln family as they turned away forever from the grave of Nancy Lincoln under the trees. The poor woman who rested there in the spot soon to be obliterated, little thought on her dying bed that the little boy she was leaving to poverty and adventure would be one day ranked with great men of the ages with Servius Tullius, Pericles, Cincinnatus, Cromwell, Hampden, Washington, and Bolivar; that he would sit in the seat of a long line of illustrious Presidents, call a million men to arms, or that his rude family features would find a place among the grand statues of every liberated country on earth.

Poor Nancy Hanks! Every one who knew her had felt the warmth of her kindness and marked her sadness. She was an intellectual woman, was deeply religious, and is believed to have been a very emotional character in the old Methodist camp-meetings. Her family, the Hankses, were among the best singers and loudest shouters at the camp-meetings, and she was in sympathy with them.

Her heart lived on in Abraham. When she fell sick of the epidemic fever, Abraham, then a boy of ten years of age, waited upon her and nursed her. There was no doctor within twenty-five miles. She was so slender, and had been so ill-sustained that the fever-fires did their work in a week. Finding her end near, she called Abraham and his little sister to her, and said:

“Be good to one another.”

Her face looked into Abraham’s for the last time.

“Live,” she said, “as I have taught you. Love your kindred, and worship God.”

She faded away, and her husband made her coffin with a whip-saw out of green wood, and on a changing October day they laid her away under the trees. They were leaving her grave now, the humblest of all places then, but a shrine to-day, for her son’s character has glorified it.

He must have always remembered the hymns that she used to sing. Some of them were curious compositions. In the better class of them were; “Am I a soldier of the cross,” “Alas! and did my Saviour bleed,” and “How tedious and tasteless the hour.” The camp-meeting melodies were simple, mere movements, like the negro songs.

Abraham swung his whip lustily over the oxen’s heads on that long spring journey, and directed the way. The wheels of the cart were great rollers, and they creaked along. Here and there the roads were muddy, but the sky was blue above, and the buds were swelling, and the birds were singing, and the little dog that belonged to the party kept close to his heels, and the poor people journeyed on under the giant timber, and out of it at times along the ocean-like prairies of the Illinois. The world was before them an expanse of forest and prairie that in fifty years were to be changed by the axe and plowshare into prosperous farms and homesteads, and settled by the restless nations of the world.

The journey was long. There were spells of wintry weather, for the spring advanced by degrees even here. Streams overflowing their banks lay across their way, and these had to be forded.

One morning the party came to a stream covered with thin ice. The oxen and horses hesitated, but were forced into the cold water. After a dreary effort the hardy pilgrims passed over and mounted the western bank. A sharp cry was heard on the opposite side.

“You have left the dog, Abe,” said one. “Good riddance to him! I am glad that we are quit of him at last.”

The dog’s pitiable cry rang out on the crisp, cool air. He was barking to Abraham, and the teamster’s heart recognized that the animal’s call was to him.

“See him run, and howl!” said another. “Whip up, Abe, and we will soon be out of sight.”

Young Lincoln looked behind. The little animal would go down to the water, and try to swim across, but the broken ice drove him back. Then he set up a cry, as much as to say:

“Abe, Abe, you will not leave me!”

“Drive on,” said one of the men. “He’ll take care of himself. He’d no business to lag behind. What do we want of the dog, anyway?”

The animal cried more and more piteously and lustily.

“Whoa!” said Lincoln.

“What are you going to do, Abe?”

“To do as I would be done by. I can’t stand that.”

Lincoln plunged into the frozen water and waded across. The dog, overjoyed, leaped into his arms. Lincoln returned, having borne the little dog in his arms across the stream. He was cold and dripping, and was censured for causing a needless delay. But he had a happy face and heart.

Referring to this episode of the journey a long time afterward, Lincoln said to a friend:

“I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog. Pulling off shoes and socks, I waded across the stream, and triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under my arms. His frantic leaps of joy, and other evidences of gratitude, repaid me for all the exposure I had undergone.”