living and growing
thing about him,--all helped to make him unusually strong, healthy,
buoyant, and rich in animal spirits.

The first great sorrow of his life came to him in the death of his
dearly loved mother in 1818. The boy mourned for her as few children
mourn even for the most loving parent. Day after day he went from the
home made desolate by her death to weep on her grave under the near-by
trees.

There were no churches in the Indiana wilderness, and the visits of
wandering ministers of religion to the scattered settlements were few
and far between. Little Abraham was grieved that no funeral service had
been held over his dead mother. He felt that it was in some sense a
lack of respect to her. He thought a great deal about the matter, and
finally wrote a letter to a minister named Elkins, whom the family had
known in Kentucky. Several months after the receipt of the letter
Parson Elkins came to Indiana. On the Sabbath morning after his
arrival, in the presence of friends who had come long distances to
assist, he read the funeral service over the grave of Mrs. Lincoln. He
also spoke in touching words of the tender Christian mother who lay
buried there. This simple service greatly comforted the heart of the
lonely boy.

Some time after Thomas Lincoln brought a new mother to his children
from Kentucky. This was Mrs. Sally Bush Johnston, a young widow, who
had been a girlhood friend of Nancy Hanks. She had three
children,--John, Sarah, and Matilda Johnston,--who accompanied her to
Indiana. The second Mrs. Lincoln brought a stock of household goods and
furniture with her from Kentucky, and with the help of these made so
many improvements in the rude log cabin that her stepchildren regarded
her as a sort of magician or wonder worker. She was a good mother to
them, intelligent, kind, and loving.

He was ten years old at this time, and had been to school but little.
Indeed, he says himself that he only went to school "by littles," and
that all his schooling "did not amount to more than a year." But he had
learned to read when he was a mere baby at his mother's knee; and to a
boy who loved knowledge as he did, this furnished the key to a broad
education. His love of reading amounted to a passion. The books he had
access to when a boy were very few; but they were good ones, and he
knew them literally from cover to cover. They were the Bible, "Robinson
Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," a "History of the United States,"