Great as had been his privations in this Indiana home, Abe had now to suffer a more grievous loss in the death of his mother. The rough life of the forest and the exposure of the open cabin had been too much for her delicate constitution. Before she died she said to her boy: "Abraham, I am going away from you, and you will never see me again. I know that you will always be good and kind to your sister and father. Try to live as I have taught you, and to love your Heavenly Father." Many years later Lincoln said, "All that I am, or I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."
A year after this sad event, his father brought home a second wife, who became a devoted friend to the motherless boy. Energetic, thrifty, and intelligent, this woman, who had been accustomed to better things than she found in her new home, insisted that the log cabin should be supplied with a door, a floor, and windows, and she at once began to make the children "look a little more human."
Abraham Lincoln's schooling was brief—not more than a year in all. Such schools as he attended were nothing like the graded schools of to-day. The buildings were rough log cabins with the earth for floor and oiled paper for windows. Desks were unknown, the little school-house being furnished with rude benches made of split logs, after the manner of the stools and tables in the Lincoln home. The teachers were ignorant men, who taught the children a little spelling, reading, writing, and ciphering. While attending the last school, Abe had to go daily a distance of four and a half miles from his home.
In spite of this meagre schooling, however, the boy, by his self-reliance, resolute purpose, and good reading habits, acquired the very best sort of training for his future life. He had but few books at his home, and found it impossible in that wild country to find many in any other homes. Among those which he read over and over again, while a boy, were the Bible, "Æsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," a History of the United States, and "Weems's Life of Washington."
His step-mother said of him: "He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards, if he had no paper, and keep it before him until he could get paper. Then he would copy it, look at it, commit it to memory and repeat it."
His step-brother said: "When Abe and I returned to the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread, take down a book, sit down, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read." When night came he would find a seat in the corner by the fireside, or stretch out at length on the floor, and write or work sums in arithmetic on a wooden shovel, using a charred stick for a pencil or pen. When he had covered the shovel, he would shave off the surface and begin over again.
Having borrowed a copy of the "Life of Washington" on one occasion, he took it to bed with him in the loft and read until his candle gave out. Then before going to sleep, he tucked the book into a crevice of the logs in order that he might have it at hand as soon as daylight would permit him to read the next morning. But during the night a storm came up, and the rain beat in upon the book, wetting it through and through. With heavy heart Lincoln took it back to its owner, who told him that it should be his if he would work three days to pay for it. Eagerly agreeing to do this, the boy carried his new possession home in triumph. This book had a marked influence over his future.
Until he was twenty his father hired him out to all sorts of work, at which he sometimes earned $6 a month and sometimes thirty-one cents a day. Just before he came of age his family, with all their possessions packed in a cart drawn by four oxen, moved again toward the West. For two weeks they travelled across the country into Illinois, and finally made a new home on the banks of the Sangamon River, a stream flowing into the Ohio. The tiresome journey was made in the month of March along muddy roads and over swollen streams, young Lincoln driving the oxen.
On reaching the end of the journey, Abraham helped his father to build a hut and to clear and fence ten acres of land for planting. Shortly after this work was done he bargained with a neighbor, Mrs. Nancy Miller, to split 400 rails for every yard of brown jeans needed to make him a pair of trousers. As Lincoln was tall, three and one-half yards were needed, and he had to split 1,400 fence rails—a large amount of work for a pair of trousers.
From time to time he had watched the boats carrying freight up and down the river, and had wondered where the vessels were going. Eager to know by experience the life of which he had dreamed, he determined to become a boatman. He was hungry for knowledge, and with the same earnestness and energy with which he had absorbed the great thoughts of his books, he now applied himself to learn the commerce of the river and the life along its banks. When an opportunity presented, he found employment on a flat boat that carried corn, hogs, hay, and other farm produce down to New Orleans. On one of his trips he chanced to attend a slave auction. Looking on while one slave after another was knocked down to the highest bidder, his indignation grew until at length he cried out, "Boys, let's get away from this; if I ever get a chance to hit that thing" (meaning slavery), "I'll hit it hard." Little did he think then what a blow he would strike some thirty years later.