Abraham Lincoln from a boy had a tender heart, a horror of cruelty and of everything that would cause any creature pain. He was merciful to every one but the unmerciful, and charitable to every one but the uncharitable, and kind to everyone but the unkind. But his nature made war at once on any one who sought to injure another, and he was especially severe on any one who was so mean and cowardly as to disregard the natural rights of a dumb animal or reptile. He had in this respect the sensitiveness of a Burns. All great natures, as biography everywhere attests, have fine instincts—this chivalrous sympathy for the brute creation.
Lincoln's nature was that of a champion for the right. He was a born knight, and, strangely enough, his first battles in life were in defense of the turtles or terrapins. He was a boy of powerful strength, and he used it roughly to maintain his cause. He is said to have once exclaimed that the turtles were his brothers.
The early days of spring in the old forests are full of life. The Sun seems to be calling forth his children. The ponds become margined with green, and new creatures everywhere stir the earth and the waters. Life and matter become, as it were, a new creation, and one can believe anything when he sees how many forms life and matter can assume under the mellowing rays of the sun. The clod becomes a flower; the egg a reptile, fish, or bird. The cunning woodchuck, that looks out of his hole on the awakening earth and blue sky, seems almost to have a sense of the miracle that has been wrought. The boy who throws a stone at him, to drive him back into the earth, seems less sensible of nature than he. It is a pleasing sight to see the little creature, as he stands on his haunches, wondering, and the brain of a young Webster would naturally seek to let such a groundling have all his right of birth.
One day, when the blue spring skies were beginning to glow, Abraham went out to play with his companions. It was one of his favorite amusements to declaim from a stump. He would sometimes in this way recite long selections from the school Reader and Speaker.
He had written a composition at school on the defense of the rights of dumb animals, and there was one piece in the school Reader in which he must have found a sympathetic chord, and which was probably one of those that he loved to recite. It was written by the sad poet Cowper, and began thus:
"I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail,
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live."
As Abraham and his companions were playing in the warm sun, one said:
"Make a speech for us, Abe. Hip, hurrah! You've only to nibble a pen to make poetry, and only to mount a stump to be a speaker. Now, Abe, speak for the cause of the people, or anybody's cause. Give it to us strong, and we will do the cheering."
Abraham mounted a stump in the school-grounds, on which he had often declaimed before. He felt something stirring within him, half-fledged wings of his soul, that waited a cause. He would imitate the few preachers and speakers that he had heard—even an old Kentucky preacher named Elkins, whom his own mother had loved, and whose teachings the good woman had followed in her short and melancholy life.
He began his speech, throwing up his long arms, and lifting at proper periods his coon-skin cap. The scholars cheered as he waxed earnest. In the midst of the speech a turtle came creeping into the grounds.