Abraham Lincoln.
That expression of habitual melancholy in Lincoln's face, for example, was really a reproduction of the features of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his mother. For, through long drudgery and privation, in cabin after cabin, Mrs. Lincoln had lost all her comeliness, and became bent and care-worn and sad-faced while Abraham was still an impressionable youth.
How Lincoln reverenced that mother is told by all his biographers. She it was who, possessing the accomplishments of reading and writing, not common at that time among the poor people of Kentucky, taught Abraham his letters and gave him his first lessons in writing.
When Mrs. Lincoln died her son spent months roving the woods, vainly trying to recover from his grief. The mother was buried without any funeral service, there being no minister in the vicinity. But Abraham traversed the country for twenty miles in every direction till he found an itinerant preacher and induced him to come to his mother's grave and there preach a funeral sermon.
"Now," he said, "I have henceforth but one purpose in life: to live as she would have me live."
And in after years Lincoln was deeply and visibly affected whenever he heard of any incident involving the love of mother and son.