In his teens Abraham Lincoln, while not considered a man, was able to swing an ax with full power. It was the borderer's multifarious tool and accompanied him everywhere. One time, while sauntering along Gentryville, his stepsister playfully ran at him of a sudden and leaped from behind upon him. Holding on to his shoulders, she dug her knees into his back--a rough trick called fun by these semi-savages--and brought him to the ground. Unfortunately, she caused him to release the ax in his surprise, and it cut her ankle. The boy stopped the wound and bandaged it, while she moaned. Through her cries, he reproached her, and concluded:
"How could you disobey mother so?" for she had been enjoined not to follow her brother. "What are you going to tell her about getting hurt?"
"Tell her I did it with the ax," she replied. "That will be the truth?" she questioned, with the prevarication of her sex inborn.
"Yes, that's the truth, but it is not all the truth. You tell the whole truth."
The mother was forgiving, and nothing more came of the casualty.
LINCOLN'S WEDDING-SONG.
Abraham Lincoln's own sister Sarah married one Aaron Grigsby, a man in the settlers' line of life; and Abraham, a youth under age, composed an epithalamium on the occasion. The title was "Adam and Eve's Wedding-Song," and the principal verses are given to show what roughness pervaded the home on the frontier:
The woman was not taken from Adam's feet, we see,
So we must not abuse her, the meaning seems to be.
The woman was not taken from Adam's head, we know;
To show she must not rule him--'tis evidently so.
The woman, she was taken from under Adam's arm,
So she must be protected from injuries and harm.
"RISK THE HOGS AND I WILL RISK MYSELF!"
At the age of seventeen, Lincoln, the strongest and "longest" younker of the neighborhood, was let out by his father for six dollars a month and board to a James Taylor, ferryman of Anderson's Creek and the Ohio River. He was also expected to do the farmwork and other jobs, as well as the chores in and about the house. This included tending to the baby--the good wives uniting to pronounce Abe the best of helps as "so handy," as Mrs. Toodles would say.