“He was the North, the South, the East, the West;
The thrall, the master, all of us in one.”
Ida Tarbell, after her extensive original researches into the early life of Lincoln, very thoughtfully, says,
“He seems to have had as nearly a universal human sympathy as any one in history. A man could not be so high or so low that Lincoln could not meet him and he could not be so much of a fool, or so many kinds of a fool. He could listen unruffled to cant, to violence, to criticism, just and unjust. Amazingly he absorbed from each man the real thing he had to offer, annexed him by showing him that he understood, and yet gave him somehow a sense of the impossibility of considering him alone, and leaving out the multitudes of other men as convinced and as loyal as he was.”
II. THE LINCOLN BOY OF THE KENTUCKY WOODS
We may well believe that the little Lincoln boy was thrilled with stories of noxious “varmints” and wild “Injuns.” As the fire crackled in the wide earthen fireplace and the sparks flew up the broad dirt chimney, we may well suppose the mystic superstitions of the ignorant times thrilled the young mind with vague fears and often with indescribable dread.
Doubtless he often heard his father tell the story of his own desperate boyhood, how Mordecai, the elder brother, had, just in the nick of time, saved his life from the tomahawk.
Abe’s father when a child went out to their clearing with his two brothers and their father, whose name was Abraham. We may be sure that their watchful eyes looked closely into every pile of brush or clump of bushes that might hide an Indian. But the Indians were trained to hide like snakes or foxes. So that which was ever expected and feared happened. There was a shot from an unseen form in the bushes, and the father of the family fell dead.
Mordecai, the eldest, ran for the cabin, the other boy ran for help, but the younger boy, too bewildered and not comprehending what had happened, remained by the side of his fallen father.