, 1873-06-04

Elizabothtown, where he had married
Nancy Hanks, and taken his bride to that
mean and dirty shed. There he fonnd Mrs.
Johnston, whom he had once asked to
marry him, when she was a young girl,
named Sally Bush. She had rejected him
then, and married the co&nty jailer, but
was now a widow WITH three children.
Thomas Lincoln visited her, to her great
surprise, and addressed her thus:
We'll, Mss Johnston, I have no wife,
and YOU have no husband [ came q
purpose to marry you. Iknow'd you from
a gal, aud you knoW'd me from a boy. I
have no time to lose, and if you are wiIlin,'
let it be done straight off"
To which she replied, "Tommy, I know
you well, and have no objection to marry
ing you but cannot do it straight off, as
[ owe some debts that must first be paid"
But the debts did not detain them long,
tor the very next day the marriage took
place and a few days after Abraham and
his sister saw coming through the woods a
four-horse Wagon loaded with furniture,
with their father, their new mother aud her
three children riding upon it. It was .
wonderful load, for the time and place.
Abraham Lincoln had never seen such
things a handsome bureau, a good table,
some chairs, a clothes chest, proper cook
ing utensils, knives, forks, and bedding.
the best ofal was thatthe new mother
was a kind, good, energetic, civilized, moJh-
crly woman. She made her husband put
down a floor and add windows and doors to
his cabin. 1t was in the middle of winter,
and size FASTENED to make warm clothing for
her husbands TWO half-naked children.
For the first time in their lives they slept
in d comfortable bed, and had plenty of
covering to keep them warm during the
january nights. She washed, combed,
and cared for them in a humane, motherly
way. Tom Lincoln, like most " Jolly good
fellows" was a cross man at home, and
he had saubbed and slapped his children,
tainted them, crushed thejr seIf-respeot,
and made them think that sQualor and con-
tempt We're their natural portion IN this
world. But this admirable step-mOther
encouraged them, caressed them, awoke
their saIf-love, aud made them think that
blows and tauuts and degradation and de-
privation were not, perhaps, to be their
only portion. As soon as there was q
school she sent them to it, taking care that
they should go as d%ecentIy dressed as the
place required.
Never was a mo her more tenderly be-
loved, or more deeply venerated, than this
step-motber was by Abraham Lincoln.
He felt that he oweI everything to her;
for it was she who first discovered his ca
pacity, and put him in a way OF developing
it. She taught him to believe IN himself,
and created u welI-spring of hope within
him. He visited her after his election to
the Presidency, and she lived to hear the
dreadful tidings of his death
OF course, being herself an uneducated
woman, she could only put the boy in the
way of acquiring knowledge. His W
intelligence and ambition did the rest. He
loved to get up in the loft Of the log-cabin,
and read, write and cipher, using for a
slate the wooden ire-shovel, and for a pen
Gil a piece of charcoal. lie became a great
borrower of books, and before taking them
home, would copy ONE passages and learn
others by heart. One of his borrowed
books, a small life of Washington, he placed
one night on a shelf in the log-hut, where
a storm of rain soaked it through and
through, and the boy was obliged to pay
for the volume by working three days for
the owner. He was almost wholly self
taught, even to his knowledge of law and
oooI1irod naaylv everything he knew IN