The Lincoln Story Book | Page 4

line of life; and Abraham, a youth under age, composed an epithalamium on the occasion. The title was "Adam and Eve's Wedding-Song," and the principal verses are given to show what roughness pervaded the home on the frontier:
The woman was not taken from Adam's feet, we see, So we must not abuse her, the meaning seems to be. The woman was not taken from Adam's head, we know; To show she must not rule him--'tis evidently so. The woman, she was taken from under Adam's arm, So she must be protected from injuries and harm.
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"RISK THE HOGS AND I WILL RISK MYSELF!"
At the age of seventeen, Lincoln, the strongest and "longest" younker of the neighborhood, was let out by his father for six dollars a month and board to a James Taylor, ferryman of Anderson's Creek and the Ohio River. He was also expected to do the farmwork and other jobs, as well as the chores in and about the house. This included tending to the baby--the good wives uniting to pronounce Abe the best of helps as "so handy," as Mrs. Toodles would say.
He had attained his fixed height, exactly six feet three inches. (This is his own record.) He really did, with his unusual strength, more than any man's stint, and failing to gain full man's wages, whether it was his father or he handled it, he felt the injustice, which soured him on that point. He enraged his employer's son by sitting up late to read, so that the young man struck him to silence. But the young giant refused from retaliating in kind, whether from natural magnanimity belonging to giants, or from respect for the "young master," or from self-acknowledgment that he was in the wrong. He learned the craft of river boatman in this engagement. One day, on being asked to kill a hog, he replied like the Irishman with the violin, "that he had never done it, but he would try."
"If you will risk the hog," he said, "I will risk myself!"
Becoming hog-slaughterer added this branch occupation to the many of "the man of all work." Taylor sub-let him out in this capacity for thirty cents a day, saying:
"Abe will do any one thing about as well as another."
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THE REST WAS VILE.
The Lincoln homestead in Indiana, in 1820-23, had at the first the primitive corn-mill in the Indian fashion--a burnt-out block with a pounder rigged to a well-sweep. A water-mill being set up ten miles off, on Anderson's Creek, that was superseded, as improvement marched, by a horse-power one. To this Lincoln, as a lad of sixteen or seventeen, would carry the corn in a bag upon an old flea-bitten gray mare. One day, on unhitching the animal and loading it, and running his arm through the head-gear loop to lead, he had no sooner struck it and cried "Get up, you de----," when the beast whirled around, and, lashing out, kicked him in the forehead so that he fell to the ground insensible. The miller, Hoffman, ran out and carried the youth indoors, sending for his father, as he feared the victim would not revive. He did not do so until hours after having been carried home. When conscious, his faculties, as psychologically ordained, resumed operations from the instant of suspension, and he uttered the sequel to his outcry:
"----vil!"
Lincoln's own explanation is thus:
"Just before I struck the mare, my will, through the mind, had set the muscles of my tongue to utter the expression, and when her heels came in contact with my head, the whole thing stopped half-cocked, as it were, and was only fired off when mental energy or force returned."
His friends interpreted the occurrence as a proof of his always finishing what he commenced.
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"NO HEAPING COALS OF FIRE ON THAT HEAD."
The wantonly cruel experiment of testing the sensitiveness in reptiles armored, passed into a proverb out West in pioneer times. Besides carving initials and dates on the shell of land tortoises, boys would fling the creatures against tree or rock to see it perish with its exposed and lacerated body, or literally place burning coals on the back. In such cases Lincoln, a boy in his teens, but a redoubtable young giant, would not only interfere vocally, but with his arms, if needed.
"Don't terrapins have feelings?" he inquired.
The torturer did not know the right answer, and, persisting in the treatment, had the shingle wrenched from his hand and the cinders stamped out, while the sufferer was allowed to go away.
"Well, feelings or none, he won't be burned any more while I am around!"
He did not always have to resort to force in his corrections, as he obtained the title of "Peacemaker" by other means, and the spell in