place where he went to board was the house of one Lucas, consisting of
a single room, sixteen feet square, and tenanted by Mr. and Mrs.
Lucas, ten children, three dogs, two cats, and himself. There were
many who lived in hovels so cold that they had to sleep on their shoes
to keep them from freezing too stiff to be put on. The children grew
inured to misery like this, and played barefoot in the snow. It is an
error to suppose that all this could be undergone with impunity. They
suffered terribly from malarial and rheumatic complaints, and the
instances of vigorous and painless age were rare among them. The lack
of moral and mental sustenance was still more marked. They were
inclined to be a religious people, but a sermon was an unusual luxury,
only to be enjoyed at long intervals and by great expense of time.
There were few books or none, and there was little opportunity for the
exchange of opinion. Any variation in the dreary course of events was
welcome. A murder was not without its advantages as a stimulus to
conversation; a criminal trial was a kind of holiday to a county. It
was this poverty of life, this famine of social gratification, from
which sprang their fondness for the grosser forms of excitement, and
their tendency to rough and brutal practical joking. In a life like
theirs a laugh seemed worth having at any expense.

[Illustration: HOUSE NEAR BEECHLAND, KENTUCKY, IN WHICH THOMAS LINCOLN
AND NANCY HANKS WERE MARRIED.]

But near as they were to barbarism in all the circumstances of their
daily existence, they were far from it politically. They were the
children of a race which had been trained in government for centuries
in the best school the world has ever seen, and wherever they went
they formed the town, the county, the court, and the legislative power
with the ease and certainty of nature evolving its results. And this