a

army of a 10000men having plundered a bity took so much money that when it was shared among thena each man had 27. I demond

how much money was taken in all

FRAGMENT FROM A LEAF OF LINCOLN'S EXERCISE-BOOK.

LINCOLN'S EXPERIENCE AS A BOATMAN.

79

and "sleds," with tidy cabins where families lived, and where one could see the washing stretched, the children playing, the mother on pleasant days rocking and sewing; keel-boats, which dodged in and out and turned inquisitive noses up all the creeks and bayous; great fleets from the Alleghanies, made up of a score or more of timber rafts, and manned by forty or fifty rough boatmen; "Orleans boats," loaded with flour, hogs, produce of all kinds; pirogues, made from great trees; "broadhorns" curious nondescripts worked by a wheel; and, after 1812, steamboats.

The store in Gentryville in which Lincoln first made his reputation as a debater and story-teller was owned by Mr. Jones. The year before the Lincolns moved to Illinois Abraham clerked in the store, and it is said that when he left Indiana Mr. Jones sold him a pack of goods which he peddled on his journey. Mr. Jones was the representative from Spencer County in the State legislature from 1838 to 1841. He is no longer living. His son, Captain William Jones, is still in Gentryville.

All this traffic was leisurely. Men had time to tie up and tell the news and show their wares. Even the steamboats loitered as it pleased them. They knew no schedule. They stopped anywhere to let passengers off. They tied up wherever it was convenient, to wait for fresh wood to be cut and loaded, or for repairs to be made. Waiting for repairs seems, in fact, to have absorbed a great deal of the time of these early steamers. They were continually running on to sawyers," or "planters," or "wooden islands," and they blew up with a regularity which was monotonous. Even as late as 1842, when Charles Dickens made the trip down the Mississippi, he was often gravely recommended to keep as far aft as possible, "because the steamboats generally blew up forward."

It was this varied river life with which Abraham Lincoln came into contact as a ferryman and boatman. Who can believe that he could see it and be part of it without learning much of

the life and the world beyond him? Every time a steamboat or raft tied up near Anderson Creek and he with his companions boarded it and saw its mysteries and talked with its crew, every time he rowed out with passengers to a passing steamer, who can doubt that he came away with new ideas and fresh energy? The trips to New Orleans were, to a thoughtful boy, an education of no mean value. It was the most cosmopolitan and brilliant city of the United States at that date, and there young Lincoln saw life at its intensest.

CHAPTER V.

LINCOLN'S REPUTATION IN INDIANA.-REMINISCENCES OF HIS

ASSOCIATES.

N spite of the crudeness of these early opportunities for learning; in spite of the fact that he had no wise direction, that he was brought up by a father with no settled purpose, and that he lived in a pioneer community, where a young man's life at best is but a series of makeshifts, Lincoln soon developed a determination to make something out of himself, and a desire to know, which led him to neglect no opportunity to learn. The only unbroken outside influence which directed and stimulated him in his ambitions was that coming first from his mother, then from his step-mother. These two women, both of them of unusual earnestness and sweetness of spirit, were one or the other of them at his side throughout his youth and young manhood. The ideal they held before him was the simple ideal of the early American, that if a boy is upright and industrious he may aspire to any place within the gift of the country. The boy's nature told him they were right. Everything he read confirmed their teachings, and he cultivated, in every way open to him, his passion to know and to be something.

There are many proofs that Lincoln's characteristics were recognized at this period by his associates; that his determination to excel, if not appreciated, yet made its imprint. In 1865, thirtyfive years after he left Gentryville, a biographer, anxious to save all that was known of Lincoln in Indiana, went among his old associates, and with a sincerity and thoroughness worthy of

From a photograph in the possession of Mr. Stuart Brown of Springfield, Illinois. The original of this photograph was bought in 1860, in a Springfield gallery, by Mr. D. McWilliams of Dwight, Illinois. Mr. McWilliams sent the picture to Mr. Milton Hay Jopingfield, an intimate friend of Mr. Lincoln's, and from him received the following letter: "I am greatly pleased with this picture of Lincoln. I think it reproduces the man as he was, in the sober expression most habitual with him, better than any other photograph I have seen of him; and this is the opinion of all the old familiar acquaintances of his to whom I have shown it."