were again on the trees. The wild flowers were
blossoming in the woods. At last the preacher came.

He had ridden a hundred miles on horseback; he had forded rivers, and
traveled through pathless woods; he had dared the dangers of the wild
forest: all in answer to the lad's beseeching letter.

He had no hope of reward, save that which is given to every man who does
his duty. He did not know that there would come a time when the greatest
preachers in the world would envy him his sad task.

And now the friends and neighbors gathered again under the great
sycamore tree. The funeral sermon was preached. Hymns were sung. A
prayer was offered. Words of comfort and sympathy were spoken.

From that time forward the mind of Abraham Lincoln was filled with a
high and noble purpose. In his earliest childhood his mother had taught
him to love truth and justice, to be honest and upright among men, and
to reverence God. These lessons he never forgot.

Long afterward, when the world had come to know him as a very great man,
he said: "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

* * * * *

III.--THE NEW MOTHER.

The log house, which Abraham Lincoln called his home, was now more
lonely and cheerless than before. The sunlight of his mother's presence
had gone out of it forever.

His sister Sarah, twelve years old, was the housekeeper and cook. His
father had not yet found time to lay a floor in the house, or to hang a
door. There were great crevices between the logs, through which the wind
and the rain drifted on every stormy day. There was not much comfort in
such a house.

But the lad was never idle. In the long winter days, when there was no
work to be done, he spent the time in reading or in trying to improve
his writing.

There were very few books in the cabins of that backwoods settlement.
But if Abraham Lincoln heard of one, he could not rest till he had
borrowed it and read it.

Another summer passed, and then another winter. Then, one day, Mr.
Lincoln went on a visit to Kentucky, leaving his two children and their
cousin, Dennis Hanks, at home to care for the house and the farm.

I do not know how long he stayed away, but it could not have been many
weeks. One evening, the children were surprised to see a four-horse
wagon draw up before the door.

Their father was in the wagon; and by his side was a kind-faced woman;
and, sitting on the straw at the bottom of the wag