[Illustration: A. Lincoln]




THE EVERY-DAY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN




CHAPTER I


Ancestry--The Lincolns in Kentucky--Death of Lincoln's
Grandfather--Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks--Mordecai
Lincoln--Birth of Abraham Lincoln--Removal to Indiana--Early
Years--Dennis Hanks--Lincoln's Boyhood--Death of Nancy Hanks--Early
School Days--Lincoln's First Dollar--Presentiments of Future
Greatness--Down the Mississippi--Removal to Illinois--Lincoln's
Father--Lincoln the Storekeeper--First Official Act--Lincoln's
Short Sketch of His Own Life.

The year 1809--that year which gave William E. Gladstone to England--was
in our country the birth-year of him who wears the most distinguished
name that has yet been written on the pages of American history--ABRAHAM
LINCOLN. In a rude cabin in a clearing, in the wilds of that section
which was once the hunting-ground and later the battle-field of the
Cherokees and other war-like tribes, and which the Indians themselves
had named Kentucky because it was "dark and bloody ground," the great
War President of the United States, after whose name History has written