Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance - Frances Cavanah (mobile ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Frances Cavanah
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"Good-by, Mamma," she called.
Sarah stood in the doorway, waving to the girls. Then she saw Abe, his arms piled high with wood. "Come in," she said. "Sally has had her bath. Now I've got a tub of good hot water and a gourd full of soap waiting for you. Skedaddle out of those old clothes and throw them in the fire."
"I ain't got any others." Abe looked terrified.
"I don't aim to pluck your feathers without giving you some new ones." Sarah laughed. "I sat up late last night, cutting down a pair of Mr. Johnston's old pants. I got a shirt, too, laid out here on the bed."
Slowly Abe started taking off his shirt. He looked fearfully at the tub of hot water.
"There's no call to be scared," said Sarah. "That tub won't bite. Now I'm going down to the spring. By the time I get back, I want you to have yourself scrubbed all over."
Abe stuck one toe into the water. He said, "Ouch!" and drew it out. He then tried again, and put in his whole foot. He put in his other foot. He sat down in the tub. By the time Sarah returned he was standing before the fire, dressed in the cut-down trousers and shirt of the late Mr. Johnston.
Sarah seemed pleased. "You look like a different boy," she said. "Those trousers are a mite too big, but you'll soon grow into them."
Abe was surprised how good it felt to be clean again. "Thank you, ma'am. Now I'd better get in some more wood."
"We have plenty of wood," said Sarah. "You see that stool? You sit down and let me get at your hair. It looks like a heap of underbrush."
Abe watched anxiously when she opened the top drawer of the bureau and took out a haw comb and a pair of scissors. I'll stand for it this time, he thought, because she's been so good to us. But if she pulls too hard—
Mrs. Lincoln did pull. But when Abe said "Ouch!" she patted his shoulder and waited a moment. He closed his eyes and screwed up his face, but he said nothing more. Perhaps she couldn't help pulling, he decided. Lock after lock she snipped off. He began to wonder if he was going to have any hair left by the time she got through.
"I've been watching you, Abe. You're a right smart boy," she said. "Had much schooling?"
"I've just been to school by littles."
"Have you a mind to go again?"
"There ain't any school since Master Crawford left. Anyhow, Pappy doesn't set much store by eddication."
"What do you mean, Abe?"
"He says I know how to read and write and cipher and that's enough for anyone."
"You can read?" she asked.
"Yes'm, but I haven't any books."
"You can read and you haven't any books. I have books and I can't read."
Abe looked at her, amazed. "You have books?"
Sarah nodded, but said nothing more until she had finished cutting his hair. Then she led him over to the bureau.
"Now see if you don't like yourself better without that brush heap on top of your head," she asked him.
A boy with short neat hair gazed back at Abe from the mirror.
"I still ain't the prettiest boy in Pigeon Creek," he drawled, "but there ain't quite so much left to be ugly. I'm right glad, ma'am, you cleared away the brush heap."
Was he joking? He looked so solemn that Sarah could not be sure. Then he grinned. It was the first time that she had seen him smile.
"You're a caution, Abe," she said. "Now sit yourself down over there at the table, and I'll show you my books."
She opened the top drawer of the bureau and took out four worn little volumes. Although she could not read, she knew the titles: "Here they are: Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, Sinbad the Sailor, and Aesop's Fables."
"Oh, ma'am, this book by Mr. Aesop is one the schoolmaster had. The stories are all about some smart talking animals."
He seemed to have forgotten her, as he bent his neat shorn head down over the pages. He chuckled when he read something that amused him. Sarah watched him curiously. He was not like her John. He was not like any boy that she had ever known. But the hungry look in his eyes went straight to her heart.
He looked up at her shyly. "Ma'am," he said, "will you let me read these books sometimes?"
"Why, Abe, you can read them any time you like. I'm giving them to you to keep."
"Oh, Mamma!" The name slipped out as though he were used to saying it. He had a feeling that Nancy, his own mother, had never gone away.
"You're my boy, now," Sarah told him, "and I aim to help you all I can. The next time a school keeps in these parts, I'm going to ask your pappy to let you and the other children go."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Abe. "I mean—thank you, Mamma."
6Many changes were taking place in the Lincoln cabin. Sarah persuaded Tom to cut two holes in the walls for windows, and she covered them with greased paper to let in the light. He made a wooden door that could be shut against the cold winter winds. Abe and Dennis gave the walls and low ceiling a coat of whitewash, and Sarah spread her bright rag rugs on the new wooden floor.
"Aunt Sairy," Dennis told her, "you're some punkins. One just naturally has to be somebody when you're around."
Abe smiled up at her shyly. "It is sort of like the magic in that story of Sinbad you gave me."
The other children were asleep. Abe sprawled on the floor, making marks on a wooden shovel with a pointed stick. Tom, seated in one of his wife's chairs, was dozing on one side of the fireplace.
Sarah put down her knitting and looked around the cabin. "The place does look right cozy," she replied. "What is that you're doing, Abe?"
"Working my sums."
Tom opened his eyes. "You know how to figure enough already. Put that shovel up and go to bed."
Abe took a knife and scraped the figures from the wooden shovel. He placed it against one side of the fireplace. "Good night, Mamma," he said.
"Good night, Abe."
Sarah's eyes were troubled. She waited until Dennis had joined Abe in the loft, then turned to her husband. "I've been meaning to tell you, Tom, what a good pa you've been to my young ones."
She saw that he was pleased. "I've tried to be a good mother to Abe and Sally, too," she went on.
"You have been, Sairy. They took to you right off."
"I'm right glad, but there's something else I want to talk to you about, Tom." He was nodding again in his chair, and she paused to make sure that he was listening. "Abe's a smart boy. I told him the next time a school keeps in these parts, I'd ask you to let him and the other children go."
"Humph!" Tom grunted. "There ain't any school for him to go to. Anyway, he wastes enough time as 'tis. He's always got his nose buried in those books you brought."
"That bothers me, too. I saw you cuff him the other day because he was reading."
"I had to, Sairy. I told him to come out and chop some wood, but he up and laughed in my face."
"He wasn't laughing at you, Tom. He was laughing at Sinbad."
"Who in tarnation is Sinbad?"
"A fellow in one of his books. Abe said that Sinbad sailed his flatboat up to a rock, and the rock was magnetized and pulled all the nails out of his boat. Then Sinbad fell into the water."
"That's what I mean," Tom exploded. "Dennis told him that book was most likely lies, but Abe keeps on reading it. Where is all this book learning going to get him? More'n I ever had."
"Maybe the Lord meant for young ones to be smarter than their parents," said Sarah, "or the world might never get any better."
Tom shook his head in dismay. "Women and their fool notions! If I don't watch out, you'll be spoiling the boy more'n his own mammy did."
Sarah's cheeks were red as she bent over her knitting. Tom was right about one thing. There was no school for Abe to go to. But some day there would be. Every few weeks another clearing was made in the forest, and the neighbors gathered for a "house raising" to help put up a cabin. Then smoke would rise from a new chimney, and another new home would be started in the wilderness.
With so many new settlers, there was usually plenty of work for Abe. Whenever Tom did not need him at home, he hired out at twenty-five cents a day. He gave this money to his father. That was the law, Tom said. Not until Abe was twenty-one would he be allowed to keep his wages for himself. As a hired boy, he plowed corn, chopped wood, and did all kinds of chores. He did not like farming, but he managed to have fun.
"Pa taught me to work," Abe told one farmer who had hired him, "but he never taught me to love it."
The farmer scratched his head. He couldn't understand a boy who was always reading, and if Abe wasn't reading he was telling jokes. The farmer thought that Abe was lazy.
"Sometimes," the farmer said, "I get awful mad at you, Abe Lincoln. You crack your jokes and spin your yarns, if you want to, while the men are eating their dinner. But don't you keep them from working."
The other farm hands liked to gather around Abe when they stopped to eat their noon meal. Sometimes he would stand on a tree stump and "speechify." The men would become so interested that they would be late getting back to the fields. Other times he would tell them stories that he had read in books or that he had heard from some traveler who had passed through Pigeon Creek. He nearly always had a funny story to tell.
Yet there was "something peculiarsome about Abe," as Dennis Hanks once said. He would be laughing one minute; the next minute he would look solemn and sad. He would walk along the narrow forest trails, a faraway look in his eyes. Someone would say "Howdy, Abe." Then he would grin and start "cracking jokes" again.
Although he worked such long hours, Abe still found time to read. He sat up late and got up early in the morning, and Sarah made the children keep quiet when he wanted to study. Sometimes he took a book to work with him. Instead of talking to the other farm hands at noon, he'd go off by himself and read a few pages while he ate his dinner. People for miles around loaned him books. Sometimes he walked fifteen miles to Rockport, the county seat, to borrow books from John Pitcher, the town lawyer.
"Everything I want to know is in books," he told Dennis. "My best friend is a man who can give me a book I ain't read."
Late one afternoon, about two years after Sarah had arrived, Abe came home with a new book under his arm. Tom and Dennis had joined several of their neighbors in a big bear hunt and planned to be gone for several days. Abe planned to read—and read—and read.
"What do you think, Mamma?" he asked. "I have
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