"I never do smoke, mother," replies Nat, pouring cataracts of innocence. "I never go to the stable nor tavern. I don't associate with Sam and Ben Drake, nor with James Cole, nor with Oliver Fowle, more than I can help. For I know they are bad boys. I see that the worst scholars at school are those who are said to disobey their parents, and every one of them are poor scholars, and they use profane language."
Virtue so immaculate at so tender an age seems to us, we are forced to admit, unnatural. The boys that have fallen in our way have never been in the habit of making profound moral reflections, and we cannot resist the unpleasant suspicion that Nat had just been playing at marbles for "havings" with Cole, Fowle, and both the Drakes at the village-inn, and, having found this vegetable repast too strong for his digestion, went home to his mother and wreaked his discomfort on edifying moral maxims. Or else he was a prig.
The unusual and highly exciting nature of the incidents recorded in these biographies must be their excuse for a seeming violation of privacy. When a rare and precious gem is in question, one must not be over-scrupulous about breaking open the casket. What puerile prejudice in favor of privacy can rear its head in face of the statement which tells us that at the age of seven years our honored President—may he still continue such!—"devoted himself to learning to read with an energy and enthusiasm that insured success"?—such success that we learn "he could read some when he left school."
At the age of nine he shot a turkey!
Soon after,—for here we are involved in a chronological haze,—he began to "take lessons in penmanship with the most enthusiastic ardor."
Subsequently, "there, on the soil of Indiana, Abraham Lincoln wrote his name, with a stick, in large characters,—a sort of prophetic act, that students of history may love to ponder. For, since that day, he has 'gone up higher,' and written his name, by public acts, on the annals of every State in the Union."
He wrote a letter.
He rescued a toad from cruel boys,—for, though "he could kill game for food as a necessity, and dangerous wild animals, his soul shrunk from torturing even a fly." Dear heart, we can easily believe that!
He bought a Ramsay's "Life of Washington," and paid for it with the labor of his own hands.
He helped to save a drunkard's life. "He thought more of the drunkard's safety than he did of his own ease. And there are many of his personal acquaintances in our land who will bear witness, that, from that day to this, this amiable quality of heart has won him admiring friends."