ummer; then in the autumn of 1819 Thomas Lincoln went
back to Kentucky and married Sarah Bush Johnston, whom he had known, and
it is said courted, when she was only Sally Bush. She had married about
the time Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, and her husband had died, leaving
her with three children. She came of a better station in life than
Thomas, and was a woman with an excellent mind as well as a warm and
generous heart. The household goods that she brought with her to the
Lincoln home filled a four-horse wagon, and not only were her own
children well clothed and cared for, but she was able at once to provide
little Abraham and Sarah with comforts to which they had been strangers
during the whole of their young lives. Under her wise management all
jealousy was avoided between the two sets of children; urged on by her
stirring example, Thomas Lincoln supplied the yet unfinished cabin with
floor, door, and windows, and life became more comfortable for all its
inmates, contentment if not happiness reigning in the little home.

The new stepmother quickly became very fond of Abraham, and encouraged
him in every way in her power to study and improve himself. The chances
for this were few enough. Mr. Lincoln has left us a vivid picture of the
situation. "It was," he once wrote, "a wild region, with many bears and
other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some
schools, so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher
beyond readin', writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three. If a
straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the
neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard."

The school-house was a low cabin of round logs, with split logs or
"puncheons" for a floor, split logs roughly leveled with an ax and set
up on legs for benches, and holes cut out in the logs and the space
filled in with squares of greased paper for window-panes. The main light
came in through the open door. Very often Webster's "Elementary
Spelling-book" was the only text-book. This was the kind of school most
common in the Middle West during Mr. Lincoln's boyhood, though already
in some places there were schools of a more pretentious character.
Indeed, back in Kentucky, at the very time that Abraham, a child of six,
was learning his letters from Zachariah Riney, a boy only a year older
was attending a Catholic seminary in the very next county. It is
doubtful if they ever met, but the destinies of the