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              Boys' and Girls' Biography of Abraham Lincoln.

                            By James H. Shaw.


    Evergreen City Publishing Company,
    Bloomington, Illinois.

    TYPOGRAPHY AND PRESSWORK BY
    EARL MARQUAM,
    BLOOMINGTON, ILLINOIS.




[Illustration]




Boys' and Girls' Biography of Abraham Lincoln.




CHAPTER I.


A great English writer[1] in a lecture on America and the Americans said
that when an American gets to heaven he will not be satisfied unless he
can move farther west.

[Footnote 1: Charles Dickens.]

He said this because it has been so much the custom of our people to
"move West." It is not so common now as it was a few years ago because
the great public lands, free to those who would settle on them or plant
trees, are mostly occupied.

The Lincoln family a couple of hundred years ago first "moved west" from
England to Massachusetts; then they moved west again to Pennsylvania;
then west and south to Virginia; then west again to Kentucky.

Way back in the last century a man was digging in the rich soil of
Kentucky. He turned up clods, planted seed and God sent the rain-drops
and sun-beams and the grain sprang up and became gold. The surest gold
mine in the world is our fertile soil and the surest miner is our
farmer.

    "Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
    And waits to see it push away the clod
    He trusts in God."

A little boy watched his father work and learned the lesson that man
lives best by the sweat of his own brow, not by the sweat of