The Life of Abraham Lincoln

r part of the country was frontier. In any portion of the country to-day, in the remotest villages and hamlets, on the enormous farms of the Dakotas or the va

closing years of the nineteenth century. So, too, it requires an extraordinary effort of t

previous to seventeen years of age have much to do with the formation of the character. If, then, we go back to the period named, we can tell with sufficient accuracy what were the circumstances of Lincoln's early life. Though we c

f the country of that day or of this day. There was little schooling and no literary training. But the woodsman has an education of his own. The region was wild in the sense that it was almost uninhabited and untilled. The forests, extending fro

verage of ten persons-say less than two families-to the square mile. Indiana has an area of 36,350 square miles. In 1810 its total population was 24,520, or an average of one person to

of surpassing beauty, was not built nor though

12,282 people; in 1820, only 55,211, or less than one to the square mile; while in 18

wildest of the wild woods, where the animals from the chipmunk to t

orses, a sufficient number of oxen, and carts that were rude and awkward. No locomotives, no bicycles, no automobiles. The first railway in Indiana was constructed in 1847,

expensive, and, while of good material, poorly made. Newspapers were unknown

. There were no self-binding harvesters, no mowing machines. There were no sewing or knittin

open fireplace, though the tallow dip was known and there were some housewives who had time to make them and the disposition to us

s. All spinning was done by means of the hand loom, and the common fabric of the

was practically certain death to the patient. Nor was th

s coffee. Herbs of the woods were dried and steeped; this was tea. The root of the sassafras furnished a different kind of tea, a substitute for the India and Ceylon teas now popular. Slippery elm bark soaked in cold

en-to-one," it was locally used as the standard of value. The luxury of quinine,

ts, and necessities of a later civilization, to realize the conditions of western life previo

nless you call it "the color of dirt." His breeches were of deer-skin with the hair outside. In dry weather these were what you please, but when wet they hugged the skin with a clammy embrace, and the victim might sigh in vain for sanitary underwear. These breeches were held up by one suspender. The hunting shirt wa

ove it, was not of that day. There were itinerant preachers who went from one locality to another, holding "revival meetings." But church buildings were rare and, to say the

d conditions Lincoln was b