VIEW OF ROCK SPRING FARM, WHERE PRESIDENT LINCOLN WAS BORN. From a photograph taken in September, 1895, for this biography. The house in which Lincoln was born is seen to the right, in the background.

See page 14.

and preach and thump until he had his auditors frightened or in tears.

son.

As soon as the child was strong enough to follow his father in the fields, he was put to work at simple tasks;-bringing tools, carrying water, picking berries, dropping seeds. He learned to know his father's farm from line to line and years after, when President of the United States, he recalled in a conversation at the White House, in the presence of Dr. J. J. Wright of Emporia, Kansas, the arrangement of the fields, and an incident of his own childish experience as a farmer's "Mr. President," one of the visitors had asked, "how would you like when the war is over to visit your old home in Kentucky?" "I would like it very much," Mr. Lincoln replied. "I remember that old home very well. Our farm was composed of three fields. It 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 through the gorges and spread all over the farm. The last thing that 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.”

CHAPTER II.

THE LINCOLNS LEAVE KENTUCKY FOR SOUTHERN INDIANA —CONDITIONS OF LIFE IN THEIR NEW HOME

IN 1816 a great event happened to the little boy. His father emigrated from Knob creek to Indiana. "This removal was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky," says his son. It was due, as well, no doubt, to the fascination which an unknown country has always for the adventurous, and to that restless pioneer spirit which drives even men of sober judgment continually towards the frontier, in search of a place where the conflict with nature is less severe some spot farther on, to which a friend or a neighbor has preceded, and from which he sends back glowing reports. It may be that Thomas Lincoln was tempted into Indiana by the reports of his brother Joseph, who had settled on the Big Blue river in that State. At all events, in the fall of 1816 he started with wife and children and household stores to journey by horseback and by wagon from Knob creek to a farm selected on a previous trip he had made. This farm, located near Little Pigeon creek, about fifteen miles north of the Ohio river, and a mile and a half east of Gentryville, Spencer County, was in a forest so dense that the road for the travellers had to be hewed out as they went.

To a boy of seven years, free from all responsibility, and too vigorous to feel its hardships, such a journey must have been a long delight and wonder. Life suddenly ceased its routine, and every day brought forth new scenes and adventures. Little Abraham saw forests greater than he had ever

dreamed of, peopled by strange birds and beasts, and he crossed a river so wide that it must have seemed to him like

the sea. To Thomas and Nancy Lincoln the journey was probably a hard and sad one; but to the children beside them it was a wonderful journey into the unknown.

On arriving at the new farm an axe was put into the boy's hands, and he was set to work to aid in clearing a field for corn, and to help build the "half-face camp" which for a year was the home of the Lincolns. There were few more primitive homes in the wilderness of Indiana in 1816 than this of young Lincoln, and there were few families, even in that day, who were forced to practice more make-shifts to get a living. The cabin which took the place of the "halfface camp" had but one room, with a loft above. For a long time there was no window, door, or floor; not even the traditional deer-skin hung before the exit; there was no oiled paper over the opening for light; there was no puncheon covering on the ground.

The furniture was of their own manufacture. The table and chairs were of the rudest sort-rough slabs of wood in which holes were bored and legs fitted in. Their bedstead, or, rather bed-frame, was made of poles held up by two outer posts, and the ends made firm by inserting the poles in augerholes that had been bored in a log which was a part of the wall of the cabin; skins were its chief covering. Little Abraham's bed was even more primitive. He slept on a heap of dry leaves in the corner of the loft, to which he mounted by means of pegs driven into the wall.

Their food, if coarse, was usually abundant; the chief difficulty in supplying the larder was to secure any variety. Of game there was plenty-deer, bear, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks, birds of all kinds. There were fish in the streams, and wild fruits of many kinds in the woods in the summer, and these were dried for winter use; but the difficulty of raising