Poor Nancy Hanks! Every one who knew her had felt the warmth of her kindness and marked her sadness. She was an intellectual woman, was deeply religious, and is believed to have been a very emotional character in the old Methodist camp-meetings. Her family, the Hankses, were among the best singers and loudest shouters at the camp-meetings, and she was in sympathy with them.
Her heart lived on in Abraham. When she fell sick of the epidemic fever, Abraham, then a boy of ten years of age, waited upon her and nursed her. There was no doctor within twenty-five miles. She was so slender, and had been so ill-sustained that the fever-fires did their work in a week. Finding her end near, she called Abraham and his little sister to her, and said:
"Be good to one another."
Her face looked into Abraham's for the last time.
"Live," she said, "as I have taught you. Love your kindred, and worship God."
She faded away, and her husband made her coffin with a whip-saw out of green wood, and on a changing October day they laid her away under the trees. They were leaving her grave now, the humblest of all places then, but a shrine to-day, for her son's character has glorified it.
He must have always remembered the hymns that she used to sing. Some of them were curious compositions. In the better class of them were; "Am I a soldier of the cross," "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed," and "How tedious and tasteless the hour." The camp-meeting melodies were simple, mere movements, like the negro songs.
Abraham swung his whip lustily over the oxen's heads on that long spring journey, and directed the way. The wheels of the cart were great rollers, and they creaked along. Here and there the roads were muddy, but the sky was blue above, and the buds were swelling, and the birds were singing, and the little dog that belonged to the party kept close to his heels, and the poor people journeyed on under the giant timber, and out of it at times along the ocean-like prairies of the Illinois. The world was before them—an expanse of forest and prairie that in fifty years were to be changed by the axe and plowshare into prosperous farms and homesteads, and settled by the restless nations of the world.
The journey was long. There were spells of wintry weather, for the spring advanced by degrees even here. Streams overflowing their banks lay across their way, and these had to be forded.
One morning the party came to a stream covered with thin ice. The oxen and horses hesitated, but were forced into the cold water. After a dreary effort the hardy pilgrims passed over and mounted the western bank. A sharp cry was heard on the opposite side.