Josiah Gilbert Holland

“ Working thus for others, receiving only the humblest wages in return, reading every book upon which he could lay his hand, pursuing various studies in the intervals of toil with special attention to arithmetic, discharging his filial duties at home and upon his father's farm, picking up bits of information from neighbors and new-comers, growing in wisdom and practical sagacity, and achieving a place in the good will and respect of all with whom he came in contact, the thirteen years of his life in Indiana wore away. ”

“ It is very difficult for anyone bred in the older communities of the country to appreciate the extreme humility of border life, the meagerness and meanness of its household appointments, and the paucity of its stimulants to mental growth and social development. The bed in which the elder Lincolns, and, on very cold nights, the little Lincolns, slept, during their first years in Indiana, was one whose rudeness will give a key to the kind of life which they lived there. The head and one side of the bedstead were formed by an angle of the cabin itself. ”

“ A trading neighbor applied to him to take charge of a flat-boat and its cargo, and, in company with his own son, to take it to the sugar plantations near New Orleans. The entire business of the trip was placed in Abraham's hands. The fact tells its own story touching the young man's reputation for capacity and integrity. He had never made the trip, knew nothing of the journey, was unaccustomed to business transactions, had never been much upon the river; but his tact, ability and honesty were so far trusted that the trader was willing to risk his cargo and his son in his care. ”

“ The delight with which the youth swung loose from the shore upon his clumsy craft, with the prospect of a ride of eighteen hundred miles before him, and a vision of the great world of which he had read and thought so much, may be imagined. ”

“ The boy and his sister were orphans, and the humble home in the wilderness was desolate. Her death occurred in 1818, scarcely two years after her removal to Indiana, and when Abraham was in his tenth year. They laid her to rest under the trees near the cabin, and, sitting on her grave, the little boy wept his irreparable loss. There were probably none but the simplest ceremonies at her burial, and neither father nor son was content to part with her without a formal Christian tribute to her worth and memory. Both thought of the good Parson Elkin whom they had left in Kentucky ”

“ Its roots were fed by this Christian mother's love; and those who have wondered at the truthfulness and earnestness of his mature character, have only to remember that the tree was true to the soil from which it sprang.
Abraham, at an early day, became a reader. Every book upon which he could lay his hands he read. He became a writer also. The majority of the settlers around him were entirely illiterate, and when it became known that Mr. Lincoln's boy could write, his services were in frequent request by them in sending epistolary messages to their friends. ”

“ Loving and telling a story better than anyone around him, except his father, from whom he inherited the taste and talent, a great talker and a warm lover of social intercourse, good-natured under all circumstances, his honesty and truthfulness well known and thoroughly believed in, he was as popular throughout all the region where he lived as he became afterward throughout the nation. ”

“ It was a happy thing for the young man that, living among the roughest of rough men, many of whom were addicted to coarse vices, he never acquired a vice. There was no taint upon his moral character. No stimulant ever entered his lips, no profanity ever came forth from them, which defiled the man. ”

“ As Abraham grew up, be became increasingly helpful in all the work of the farm, often going out to labor by the day for hire. Abundant evidence exists that he was regarded by the neighbors as being remarkable, in many respects, above the lads of his own age, with whom he associated. ”

“ The latter book undoubtedly did much to excite his taste for politics, to kindle his ambition, and to make him a warm admirer and partizan of Henry Clay. Abraham must have been very young when he read Weems' Life of Washington, and we catch a glimpse of his precocity in the thoughts which it excited, as revealed by himself in a speech made to the New Jersey Senate, while on his way to Washington to assume the duties of the Presidency. ”

“ Lincoln died, Abraham wrote a letter to Parson Elkin, informing him of his mother's death, and begging him to come to Indiana, and preach her funeral sermon. It was a great favor that he thus asked of the poor preacher. It would require him to ride on horseback nearly a hundred miles through the wilderness ”