boys. The selection here made
from these lacks refinement, and the reader must note that this was
literally a big, naughty boy, not a man who had grown stiff in
coarseness and ill-nature. First it must be recalled that Abraham bore
a grudge against the Grigsbys, an honourable grudge in its origin and
perhaps the only grudge he ever bore. There had arisen from this a
combat, of which the details might displease the fastidious, but which
was noble in so far that Abraham rescued a weaker combatant who was
over-matched. But there ensued something more displeasing, a series of
lampoons by Abraham, in prose and a kind of verse. These were gross
and silly enough, though probably to the taste of the public which he
then addressed, but it is the sequel that matters. In a work called
"The First Chronicles of Reuben," it is related how Reuben and Josiah,
the sons of Reuben Grigsby the elder, took to themselves wives on the
same day. By local custom the bridal feast took place and the two
young couples began their married careers under the roof of the
bridegrooms' father. Moreover, it was the custom that, at a certain
stage in the celebrations, the brides should be escorted to their
chambers by hired attendants who shortly after conducted the
bridegrooms thither. On this occasion some sense of mischief afoot
disturbed the heart of Mrs. Reuben Grigsby the elder, and, hastening
upstairs, just after the attendants had returned, she cried out in a
loud voice and to the great consternation of all concerned, "Why,
Reuben, you're in bed with the wrong wife!" The historian who, to the
manifest annoyance of Lincoln's other biographers, has preserved this
and much other priceless information, infers that Abraham, who was not
invited to the feast, had plotted this domestic catastrophe and won
over the attendants to his evil purpose. This is not a certain
inference, nor is it absolutely beyond doubt that the event recorded in
"The First Chronicles of Reuben" ever happened at all. What is certain
is that these Chronicles themselves, composed in what purports to be
the style of Scripture, were circulated for the joint edification of
the proud race of Grigsby and of their envious neighbours in the
handwriting of Abraham Lincoln, then between seventeen and eighteen.
Not without reason does an earlier manuscript of the same author
conclude, after several correct exercises in compound subtraction, with
the distich:--

"Abraham Lincoln