That expression of habitual melancholy in Lincoln's face, for example, was really a reproduction of the features of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his mother. For, through long drudgery and privation, in cabin after cabin, Mrs. Lincoln had lost all her comeliness, and became bent and care-worn and sad-faced while Abraham was still an impressionable youth.
How Lincoln reverenced that mother is told by all his biographers. She it was who, possessing the accomplishments of reading and writing, not common at that time among the poor people of Kentucky, taught Abraham his letters and gave him his first lessons in writing.
When Mrs. Lincoln died her son spent months roving the woods, vainly trying to recover from his grief. The mother was buried without any funeral service, there being no minister in the vicinity. But Abraham traversed the country for twenty miles in every direction till he found an itinerant preacher and induced him to come to his mother's grave and there preach a funeral sermon.
"Now," he said, "I have henceforth but one purpose in life: to live as she would have me live."
And in after years Lincoln was deeply and visibly affected whenever he heard of any incident involving the love of mother and son.
James A. Garfield.
What a contrast is this experience of Lincoln's to that of General Ulysses S. Grant, whose mother survived his Presidential career, and to that of Garfield, whose mother lived to stand by his side when he read his inaugural address on the steps of the Capitol and then to weep at his tomb! And to that of McKinley, upon whose venerable mother the eyes of the nation were turned with tender interest on March 4, 1897, when she was the first person to whom McKinley spoke as President of the United States!
"Eliza," said the father of James A. Garfield to his wife, on his dying-bed in a log cabin in the wilderness bordering the Ohio River, "I have brought you four young saplings into these woods. Take care of them."
The future President was then only two years old. His mother was left to fight the battle of life alone. She managed, by hard work, to run the little farm, and even found time to give her sons daily lessons in Bible-reading. Upon James in particular she impressed her personality, until her own high nature dominated him deeply.
When James was old enough he drove mules on the tow-path of the Ohio Canal. One pay-day his wages fell short of the proper amount.