Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1903-02-12

| about till 1t found lodgment in the top
of the tree, where his mother found it.
Another of her stories was about
Guinea niggers. l suppose you don't
know what Guinea niggers were, do
you? Well, they were not uncommon
in the days when slaves were brought
] from Africa. They were very small
in stature and very unprepossessing
in appearance and they were said to be
cannibals.
Grandma said that in her youth she
knew a young couple who bought a
pair of Guinea niggers. One day their
little child disappeared and it was
never seen again. They afterward
found that the cannibals had eaten
the child, and they were hanged for it.
Grandma, like most of the Hankses
and Lincolns, was an ardent Metho-
dist. In her old age she always knit
ted just so much on a stocking every
week day. One morning she was in
dustriously engaged in the perform
ance of her allotted stint, when some
of the younger folks came in with their
best clothes on.
why, grandma! What are you do
ing?' somebody asked. Only knitting,
she replied, with some surprise What,
knitting on Sunday, grandma? is
this Sunday asked grandma, in
amazement. When convinced that it
was she unraveled every stitch she
had done that morning, in order to
atone as far as possible for her desc
Grafton of the day."
Mrs. Moore describes having seen
with some amusement Abraham Lin
coin making a political speech in Mis-
souri,, arrayed in long and exceeding
ly crumpled linen ''duster," and a tall
hat of ancient pattern. She says that
when Lincoln was nominated for Pres
ident his humble relatives among the
Hankses held up their hands with
amazed incredulity and exclaimed with
practical unanimity: ABE Lincoln for
President? 1 don't believe it,"
There was always something queer
about the Hankses," she says; for al
though they were among the earliest
settlers in Illinois and had their pick
of the land, and plenty of it, and some
of them had large, productive farms,
yet every one of them turned out as
poor as Jobs cat.
MY mother owned slaves before the
war, but my father never did, nor did
any of the Hankses, and for that rea-
son they were called poor whites by
their neighbors who had slaves. All
the Hankses were stanch supporters of
the union during the civil war."-Bos-
ton Globe.
home. He never talked of these days
to his intimate friends Once. when
asked what he remembered about the
war with Great Britain. he replied:
Nothing but this: l had been fish
ing one day, and caught a little fish
which 1 was taking home. / met a
soldier in the road, and having always
been told at home that we must be
good to the soldiers, l gave him NV
fish,
This is the only faint glimpse. but
what it shows is rather pleasant-th
generous child and the patriotic house
hold But there is no question that
these first years of his life had their
lasting effect upon the temperament
OF this great mirthful and melancholy
man.
He had little schooling. He accom-
panied his sister, Sarah, to the only
schools in their neighborhood, one
kept by Zachariah Riney and another
by Caleb Hazel, where he learned the
alphabet and little more. But of all
those advantages for the cultivation
of a young mind and spirit which
every home now offers to its children
the books. toys. ingenious games and
daily devotion of parental love, he
knew absolutely nothing