an
interest in every detail that concerned him, or that relates to the
weird tragedy of his life and death.

[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1861]

And who was this peculiar being, destined in his mother's arms--for
cradle he had none--so profoundly to affect the future of humankind? He
has told us, himself, in words so simple and unaffected, so idiomatic
and direct, that we can neither misread them, nor improve upon them.
Writing, in 1859, to one who had asked him for some biographic
particulars, Abraham Lincoln said:--

"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My
parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished
families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who
died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My
paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham
County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where, a year or
two later, he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by
stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest.

"My father (Thomas Lincoln) at the death of his father was but six
years of age. By the early death of his father, and the very narrow
circumstances of his mother, he was, even in childhood, a wandering
laboring boy, and grew up literally without education. He never did
more in the way of writing than bunglingly to write his own
name.... He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County,
Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many
bears and other animals still in the woods.... 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.... Of
course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I
could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three. But that was
all.... The little advance I now have upon this store of education
I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

"I was raised to farm work ... till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one
I came to Illinois--Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, ...
where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came
the Black Hawk war; and I was elected capt