some persons work with their hands, and
some with their heads, and some with their hearts. Abraham's head is
always at work--he isn't like most other boys. And as far as his
heart--Well, I do love that boy, and I am his step-mother, too. He's
always been so good to me that I love to tell on't. His father, I'm
thinkin', is rather hard on him sometimes. Abe's heart knows mine and I
know his'n, and I couldn't think more on him if he was my own son. His
poor mother sleeps out there under the great trees; but I mean to be
such a mother to him that he will never know no difference."

"Yes," said Thomas Lincoln, "Abraham does middlin' well, considerin'.
But he does provoke me sometimes. He would provoke old Job himself. Why,
he will take a book with him into the corn-field, and he reads and
reads, and his head gets loose and goes off into the air, and he puts
the pumpkin-seeds in the wrong hills, like as not. He is great on the
English Reader. I'd just like for you to hear him recite poetry out of
that book. He's great on poetry; writes it himself. But that isn't
neither here nor there. Come, preacher, we'll have some supper."

The Tunker lifted his hand and said grace, after which the family sat
down to the table.

"We used to eat off a puncheon when we first came to these parts," said
Mr. Lincoln. "We had no beds, and we slept on a floor of pounded clay.
My new wife brought all of this grand furniture to me. That beereau
looks extravagant--now don't it?--for poor folks, too. I sometimes think
that she ought to sell it. I am told that in a city place it would be
worth as much as fifty dollars."

There were indeed a few good articles of furniture in the house.

The supper consisted of corn-bread of very rough meal, and of bacon,
eggs, and coffee.

"Do you smoke?" asked Mr. Lincoln, when the meal was over.

"No," said Jasper. "I have given up everything of that kind, luxuries,
and even my own name. Let us talk about our experiences. There is no
news in the world like the news from the soul. A man's inner life and
experience are about all that is worth talking about. It is the king
that makes the crown."

But Thomas Lincoln was not a man of deep inward experiences and
subjective ideas, though his first wife had been such a person, and
would have delighted Jasper. Mr. Lincoln liked best to talk about his
family and the country, and was more interested in the slow news that
came from the new settlements than in the revela