The Home of Abraham Lincoln when in his Tenth Year.
CHAPTER IV.
A BOY WITH A HEART.
Spring came early to the forests and prairies of southern Indiana. In March the maples began to burn, and the tops of the timber to change, and to take on new hues in the high sun and lengthening days. The birds were on the wing, and the banks of the streams were beginning to look like gardens, as indeed Nature's gardens they were.
The woodland ponds were full of turtles or terrapins, and these began to travel about in the warm spring air.
There was a great fireplace in Crawford's school, and, as fuel cost nothing, it was, as we have said, well fed with logs, and was kept almost continually glowing.
It was one of the cruel sports of the boys, at the noonings and recesses of the school, to put coals of fire on the backs of wandering terrapins, and to joke at the struggles of the poor creatures to get to their homes in the ponds.