youth and their fathers
in Lincoln's younger days, Abe was too kind to inflict needless
suffering upon any of God's creatures. He had real religion in his
loving heart. Even as a boy he seemed to know that

"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God that loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

CHAPTER V

LOSING HIS MOTHER

In the fall of 1817, when the Lincoln family had moved from the shed
into the rough log cabin, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came and occupied the
"darned little half-faced camp," as Dennis Hanks called it. Betsy
Sparrow was the aunt who had brought up Nancy Hanks, and she was now a
foster-mother to Dennis, her nephew. Dennis became the constant
companion of the two Lincoln children. He has told most of the stories
that are known of this sad time in the Lincoln boy's life.

The two families had lived there for nearly a year when Thomas and Betsy
Sparrow were both seized with a terrible disease known to the settlers
as the "milk-sick" because it attacked the cattle. The stricken uncle
and aunt died, early in October, within a few days of each other. While
his wife was ill with the same dread disease, Thomas Lincoln was at
work, cutting down trees and ripping boards out of the logs with a long
whipsaw with a handle at each end, which little Abe had to help him use.
It was a sorrowful task for the young lad, for Abe must have known that
he would soon be helping his father make his mother's coffin. They
buried the Sparrows under the trees "without benefit of clergy," for
ministers came seldom to that remote region.

Nancy Lincoln did not long survive the devoted aunt and uncle. She had
suffered too much from exposure and privation to recover her strength
when she was seized by the strange malady. One who was near her during
her last illness wrote, long afterward:

"She struggled on, day by day, like the patient Christian woman she was.
Abe and his sister Sarah waited on their mother, and did the little jobs
and errands required of them. There was no physician nearer than
thirty-five miles.

"The mother knew that she was going to die, and called the children to
her bedside. She was very weak and the boy and girl leaned over her
while she gave them her dying message. Placing her feeble hand on little
Abe's head, she told him to be kind and good to his father and sister.

"'Be good to one another,' she said to them bot