They acquired habits of heroism. Their sinews became wiry; their nerves
turned to steel. Their senses became sharpened. They grew alert, steady,
prompt and deft in every emergency.

Of Mordecai Lincoln, the boy who had exhibited such coolness and daring
on the day of his father's death, many stories are told after he reached
manhood. "He was naturally a man of considerable genius," says one who
knew him. "He was a man of great drollery. It would almost make you
laugh to look at him. I never saw but one other man who excited in me
the same disposition to laugh, and that was Artemus Ward. Abe Lincoln
had a very high opinion of his uncle, and on one occasion remarked that
Uncle Mord had run off with all the talents of the family."

Thomas Lincoln was twenty-eight years old before he sought a wife. His
choice fell upon a young woman of twenty-three whose name was Nancy
Hanks. Like her husband, she was of English descent. Like his, her
parents had followed in the path of emigration from Virginia to
Kentucky. The couple were married by the Rev. Jesse Head, a Methodist
minister located at Springfield, Washington County, Kentucky. They lived
for a time in Elizabethtown, but after the birth of their first child,
Sarah, they removed to Rock Spring farm, on Nolin Creek, in Hardin
(afterward LaRue) County. In this desolate spot, a strange and unlikely
place for the birth of one destined to play so memorable a part in the
history of the world, on the twelfth day of February, 1809, Abraham
Lincoln the President was born.

Of all the gross injustice ever done to the memory of woman, that which
has been accorded to Nancy Hanks is the greatest. The story which cast a
shadow upon her parentage, and on that of her illustrious son as well,
should be sternly relegated to the oblivion whence it came. Mr. Henry