mother, even in childhood he was a wandering laboring-boy, and never did more, in the way of writing than bunglingly to write his own name.

1813. Thomas Lincoln takes a farm on Knob Creek.

1813. The place on Knob Creek I remember very well. My earliest recollection is of the Knob Creek place.

1814. Before leaving Kentucky, I and my sister were sent, for short periods, to A B C schools, the first kept by Zachariah Reney, the second by Caleb Hazel.

1815. With weapons no more formidable than hickory clubs Austin Gallaher and I had been playing in the woods and hunting rabbits. After several hours of vigorous exercise we had stopped to rest. After a while I threw down my cap, climbed a tree, and was resting comfortably in the forks of two limbs. Below me stretched out full length on the grass was Austin apparently asleep. Beside him lay his cap, the inside facing upward. In the pocket of my little jacket reposed a paw-paw which I had shortly before found. The thought suddenly occurred to me that it would be great fun to drop it into Austin's upturned cap. It was so ripe and soft I could scarcely withdraw it whole from my pocket. Taking careful aim I let it fall. I had calculated just right; for it struck the cap center and I could see portions of soft yellow paw-paw spattering in every direction. I paused to observe the result, convinced that Austin would resent the indignity; but, strange to relate, the proceeding failed to arouse him. Presently I slid down the tree, but judge of my surprise on reaching the ground when I learned that, instead of sleeping, Austin had really been awake; and that while I was climbing the tree he had very adroitly changed caps, substituting my own for his, so that, instead of tormenting him as I was intending, I had simply besmeared my own headgear.

1816. Our farm was composed of three fields which lay in the valley surrounded by high hills and deep gorges. Sometimes when there came a big rain in the hills the water would come down the gorges and spread over the farm. The last thing I remember of doing there was one Saturday afternoon; the other boys planted the corn in what we called the "big field" it contained seven acres and I dropped the pumpkin seed. I dropped two seeds every other hill and every other row. The next Sunday morning there came a big rain in the hills; it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water, coming down through the gorges, washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and all clear off the field.

I can remember our life in Kentucky; the cabin, the stinted living, the sale of our possessions, and the journey with my father and mother to Southern Indiana. We removed to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in the autumn of 1816, I then being in my eighth year. This removal was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky.

Thomas Lincoln and his family settle on uncleared land, near Pigeon Creek, not far from Rockport, Indiana.

Autumn, 1816. We settled in an unbroken forest, and the clearing away of surplus wood was the great task ahead. I, though very young, was large of my age, and had an ax put into my hands at once; and from that till within my twentythird year I was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument-less, of course, in plowing and harvest seasons.

February, 1817. Our new home was a wild region with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I took an early start as a hunter, which was never much improved afterward. A few days before, the completion of my eighth year, in the absence of my father, a flock of wild tur

keys approached the new log cabin, and I with a rifle-gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. I have never since pulled a trigger on any larger game.

It was pretty pinching times at first in Indiana, getting the cabin built, and clearing for the crops, but presently we got reasonably comfortable.

October 5th, 1818. My mother died.

1819. I was kicked by a horse and apparently dead for a time.

December 2nd. My father married Mrs. Sally Johnston, at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a widow with three children by her first marriage. She proved a good and kind mother to me.

1820. There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin', writin', and cipherin'," to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. I went to A B C schools by littles, kept successively by Andrew Crawford, Sweeney, and Azel W. Dorsey. I do not remember any other. I now think that the aggregate of all my schooling did not amount to one year.

(In a copy book)

Abraham Lincoln, his hand and pen,

He will be good, but God knows when.

1821 (?). Among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way that I could not understand. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.

I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a

hunt for an idea, until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over again, until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend.

One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a great deal, and one day, when I was sitting out in the sun by the house, I wrote out a story in my mind. I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me. I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse, and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was the one we had left a few hours before, and we went in. The next night we tried again, and the same thing happened the horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded that we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father to give her to me. I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once, but I concluded that it was not much of a story. But I think that was the beginning of love with me.

Away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, Weems' Life of Washington. I remember all the accounts there given of the battlefields and struggles for the liberties of the country, and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle at Trenton, New Jersey. The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the great hardship endured at that time, all fixed themselves on my memory more than any single Revolutionary event. I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for.

1824. I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two.

Spring, 1827. He undertakes to run a ferry across the Ohio, sixteen miles from home.

Summer, 1827. I was contemplating a new flatboat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any particular, when two men came down to the shore in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different boats singled out mine, and asked: "Who owns this?" I answered, somewhat modestly, "I do." "Will you," said one of them, “take us and our trunks out to the steamer?" "Certainly," said I. I was glad to have the chance of earning something. I supposed that each of them would give me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flatboat, and the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamer.

They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks and put them on deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar and threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day and that by honest work. The world seemed fairer and wider before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that hour.

1828. When I was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, I made my first trip upon a flatboat to New Orleans. I was a hired man merely, and I and a son of the owner, without any other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the "cargo load," as it was called, made it necessary for us to linger and trade along the sugar-coast, and one night we were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob us. We were hurt some in the mêlée, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then "cut cable," "weighed anchor," and left.