cross the Ohio River. While crossing, his raft struck a snag and upset. Settlers near by saw the accident and came to his rescue. They found most of the tools and saved most of the whisky which was to help pay for the new farm. Some one loaned Mr. Lincoln a wagon and team, and with these he hauled his possessions to the nearest cabin eight miles away where he stored them until he could go back for his family.

When the Lincolns were ready to leave Kentucky, they borrowed two horses of a neighbor, and on them they packed their few possessions. The family walked behind the horses. It was a long hard journey through forests and over rough roads a distance of over eighty miles. When they reached the cabin in which their goods were stored, they borrowed a wagon, loaded all their things into it and started on. They had to travel several miles farther through the forest and often had to cut down trees and underbrush to let the team and wagon through. At length they reached a grassy knoll in the midst of the forest. This was the site Mr. Lincoln had selected for his new home. The land was good and there was plenty of dry wood to be picked up for fuel. Nearby were a spring of good water and a deer lick.

an axe.

Although Abe was still a young boy, he had learned to use He and his father began at once to fell trees for the new cabin. They built what was known as a "pole-shed." It had but three sides, a sloping roof made of poles, branches and leaves, and no floor. The low side of the shed was left open and in front of it a big fire was kept burning. Over it a big iron kettle was hung in which most of the cooking was done. The floor of the shed was covered with dry leaves and the skins of animals. The family lived in this cabin for nearly a year, but during the winter Abe and his father cut more logs for a new house. They often went hunting to keep the family in meat. Thus Abe was kept very busy and had little time to play. On stormy days, he read over and over the Bible stories his mother had read or told him and practised writing.

In the early spring the new house was built. It had no floor, no window and no door. It consisted of one large living room and a loft, in which Abe was to sleep. Abe bored holes in the logs and into these drove wooden pegs which served as a ladder to get to the loft.

Abe and his father made pole bedsteads, some three legged stools, and a hewn-log table. This was all the furniture they had, yet the family were well pleased with their new quarters.

A little later Mrs. Lincoln's aunt and uncle and her nephew, Dennis Hanks, came from Kentucky. They lived in the Lincolns' pole-shed. The Lincolns were very happy to have such near neighbors. But early in the fall, a great sorrow came to them. Mrs. Lincoln, her aunt and uncle died.

Dennis Hanks, Abe and Mr. Lincoln made the coffin for Abe's mother. The boys helped saw a log into boards and plane them. They whittled wooden pegs with which to fasten the boards together, for nails were almost unknown at that time. They buried Mrs. Lincoln under a large sycamore tree near the deer run in the forest. Abe could not get over his grief because no minister could come to conduct a funeral for his mother. He kept thinking about it. Finally he wrote what was probably his first letter to a minister he had known in Kentucky, telling him of their sorrow and asking him to come to Indiana to conduct a service for his mother. The next summer the minister came and the simple service was held. When Abe became a man he erected a monument to mark his mother's grave.

The months that followed were hard, lonely ones for the Lincoln family. Abe was about nine years old and Sarah eleven. Dennis Hanks now lived with them and he and Abe were company for each other. When they went out hunting or fishing, Sarah was left alone. Often when they returned they found her sitting by the fire crying of loneliness. It was hard for the children to find enough to eat or to wear.

Abe's mother had owned three books: the Bible, Aesop's Fables and Pilgrim's Progress. Abe read and reread these books until he knew them almost by heart. They were a

great comfort to him, especially on long winter days when there was little to do outside.

One day Mr. Lincoln announced that he was going to Kentucky on a visit. He had planted corn and he asked the boys to tend it in his absence. He was gone some time, but one evening a four-horse team drew up before the cabin and in the wagon was Mr. Lincoln, his new wife and her three children a boy and two girls. The poor, lonely little Lincoln children were very happy.

The new Mrs. Lincoln proved to be a real mother. She took the dirty, ragged little ones she found in the new home to her heart, and loved and cared for them as her own. Abe said the first thing she did to him was to scrub him up and from then on she saw that the family were clean.

She had the father fix up the cabin. He fixed the roof so it would not leak, filled the cracks between the logs to keep out the wind and rain, put in a new floor, a window and hung a door. He also made more furniture. Then the mother arranged about the cabin all the fine new things she had brought with her: six splint-bottomed chairs, a bureau, a wooden chest, a feather bed, pillows, and hand-woven blankets and comforters, pewter dishes and cooking utensils. The Lincoln cabin then looked like a real home. The family were now comfortable and happy.

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Selected

TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN

(Let each pupil give one.)

There is in the crown of England no diamond whose lustre will not pale before the name of Abraham Lincoln. - Robert Ingersoll.

He was the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever
Edwin M. Stanton.

seen.

The life of Lincoln should never be passed by in silence by old or young. He touched the log cabin and it became the palace in which greatness was nurtured. He touched the

forest and it became to him a church in which the purest and noblest worship of God was observed. In Lincoln there was always some quality which fastened him to the people and taught them to keep time to the music of his heart. He reveals to us the beauty of plain backwoods honesty.

The noblest soul of all!

-Prof. David Swing.

When was there ever, since our Washington,

A man so pure, so wise, so patient — one

Who walked with this high goal alone in sight,

To speak, to do, to sanction only Right,

Though very Heaven should fall!- Edward Rowland Sill. Lincoln was an immense personality firm but not obstinate. Obstinacy is egotism - firmness, heroism. He influenced others without effort unconsciously; and they submitted to him as men submit to nature- unconsciously. He was never severe with himself, and for that reason lenient with others.

He appeared to apologize for being kinder than his fellows. He did merciful things as stealthily as others committed crimes.

Almost ashamed of tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with that charming confusion, that awkwardness, that is the perfect grace of modesty.

He wore no official robes either on his body or his soul. He never pretended to be more or less, or other, or different, from what he really was.

He was neither tyrant nor slave. He neither knelt nor scorned.

With him men were neither great nor small they were right or wrong.

Through manners, clothes, titles, rags and race he saw the real that which is. Beyond accident, policy, compromise and war he saw the end.

He was patient as Destiny, whose undecipherable hieroglyphics were so deeply graven on his sad and tragic face. -Robert G. Ingersoll.

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America