The Soul of Ann Rutledge: Abraham Lincoln's Romance

by Bernie Babcock

"The boy was taught many things that boys on the frontier must know. He learned early to skin animals and fix the hides for clothes but he was never a hunter. He some way felt that the animals had a right to life, just as he had. They knew what it was to be hungry and cold and to sleep in leaves. It was a funny notion, but the boy felt in a way they were his brothers and he never killed them.

"After he learned to read he spent hours on the floor lyin' in the firelight with the Bible spread before him, spellin' out the words and learnin' the verses until he had read the Book many times.

"When he was nine years old his mother made him a linsey-woolsey shirt and possum-skin cap to wear with his buckskin breeches and sent him away through the woods to school. He only went for a few weeks. The boys in this school put coals on terrapin's backs. He was not quick to learn from his books but he made speeches against this cruelty, and his first fight was with a boy for robbin' a bird's nest.

"In one school he went to for a short time later, a master named Crawford taught manners. He made one boy stand at the door. When the pupils came up they were taught to lift their hats and were introduced to each other. This teacher said manners were as important as book-knowledge.

"The boy only went to school a few weeks altogether, when he was hired out by his father to work from sunrise to sunset for twenty-five cents a day. Still he studied, and a cousin named Dennis Hanks helped him. They made ink with blackberry root and copperas. They made pens of turkey-buzzard feathers. When they had no paper, which was most of the time, they wrote on boards with charred sticks. The boy figured on a wooden shovel and scraped it off clean when it was too full to hold more figures.

"His mother was always interested in his effort to get an education. She always helped him. She was sorry for him because he could not go to school, but urged him to learn so that he would not always be in the backwoods.

"Once he borrowed from the Crawford man who taught the school a book entitled 'Weems' Life of Washington!' It told about our country's struggle for freedom, how the Hessians were fought and how Washington crossed the Delaware. He pored over it until the night. He took it up into a loft and put it in a chink so it would be handy for early-morning study. A rain-storm which arose in the night beat in on the book and swelled the covers. The boy took the book back to its owner the next mornin' and offered to buy it. The man made him pull fodder three days for it. The book belonged to the boy now. He read it over and over until he became well acquainted with the Father of his Country and began to dream dreams of what he might some day do."

Abe Lincoln had been talking in a reminiscent mood with a half-smile on his face. The smile now passed. He continued: "Then death came into the settlement and took several neighbors. The mother of the boy was stricken down. She was thirty-five miles from a doctor and her nearest neighbor was dead. Seven days she lay, her children doin' for her. Then she called the children to her bedside. To the boy she said, 'Be an honest and a faithful boy, be a good and tender man. Look after your sister.' Then death came into the shack of a house and took the patient mother.

"The boy's father built a coffin and dug a grave in the clearin' near the house, and here in the edge of the dense forest where the wild things lived the tired mother's body was put to rest. There was no preacher to say a last word, there was no music but the singin' and the sighin' of the trees. There was no one to cover the rude coffin with earth but the father. There were no mourners but the two children, holdin' hands beside the grave and callin' their mother to come back.

"After the mother had gone the little girl tried to cook and keep house. The boy went every day to the edge of the forest. Very soon the tangle began to reach over his mother's grave. He wanted her to have a funeral sermon. It was not that he thought she needed it. He was sure she was with God all straightened up and no longer thin but always smilin' and glad. But she would have wanted a sermon, she had spoken of it.