out the foundations for it with indomitable spirit.  It was to be grounded on manly virtues.  It seems as though the boy felt the consecration of a high destiny from the very dawn of his intelligence, and it set him apart, secure amid the temptations and safe from the vices that corrupt many men.  In the rough garb of the backwoodsman he preserved the instincts of a gentleman.  He was the companion of bullies and boors.  He shared their work and their sports, but he never stooped to their vulgarity.  He very seldom drank with them, and they never heard him speak an oath.  He could throw the stoutest in a wrestling match, and was ready, when brought to it, to whip any insolent braggart who made cruel use of his strength.  He never flinched from hardship or danger, yet his heart was as soft and tender as a woman’s.  The great gentle giant had a feeling of sympathy for every living creature.  He was not ashamed to rock a cradle, or to carry a pail of water or an armful of wood to spare a tired woman’s arms.  Though destitute of worldly goods, he was rich in friends.  All the people of his acquaintance knew they could count on his doing the right thing always, so far as he was able.  Hence they trusted and loved him; and the title of “Honest Abe,” which he bore through life, was a seal of knighthood rarer and prouder than any king or queen could confer with the sword.  Abraham Lincoln was one of nature’s noblemen.  He showed himself a hero in every circumstance of his boyhood and youth.  The elements of greatness were visible even then.  The boy who was true to duty, patient in privation, modest in merit, kind to every form of distress, determined to rise by wresting opportunities from the grudging hand of fate, was sure to make a man distinguished among his fellows,—­a man noted among the great men of the world, as the boy had been among his neighbors in the wilds of Spencer County and New Salem.

The site of the town where Lincoln spent the last three years of the period covered in this portion of his biography is now a desolate waste.  A gentleman who visited the spot during the summer of 1885 thus describes the mournful scene:  “From the hill where I sit, under the shade of three trees whose branches make one, I look out over the Sangamon river and its banks covered apparently with primeval forests.  Around are fields overgrown with weeds and stunted oaks.  It was a town of ten or twelve years only.  It began in 1824 and ended in 1836.  Yet in that time it had a history which the world will not let die as long as it venerates the memory of the noble liberator and martyr President, Abraham Lincoln.”

CHAPTER III

Lincoln’s Beginning as a Lawyer—­His Early Taste for Politics—­Lincoln and the Lightning-Rod Man—­Not an Aristocrat—­Reply to Dr. Early—­A Manly Letter—­Again in the Illinois Legislature—­The “Long Nine”—­Lincoln on His Way to the Capital—­His Ambition in 1836—­First Meeting with Douglas—­Removal of the Illinois Capital—­One of Lincoln’s Early Speeches—­Pro-Slavery Sentiment in Illinois—­Lincoln’s Opposition to Slavery—­Contest with General Ewing—­Lincoln Lays out a Town—­The Title “Honest Abe.”