latter before it was half completed; for by this time the Sparrows had
followed the Lincolns from Kentucky, and the half-faced camp was given
up to them. But the rude cabin seemed so spacious and comfortable
after the squalor of "the camp," that Thomas Lincoln did no further
work on it for a long time. He left it for a year or two without
doors, or windows, or floor. The battle for existence allowed him no
time for such superfluities. He raised enough corn to support life;
the dense forest around him abounded in every form of feathered game;
a little way from his cabin an open glade was full of deer-licks, and
an hour or two of idle waiting was generally rewarded by a shot at a
fine deer, which would furnish meat for a week, and material for
breeches and shoes. His cabin was like that of other pioneers. A few
three-legged stools; a bedstead made of poles stuck between the logs
in the angle of the cabin, the outside corner supported by a crotched
stick driven into the ground; the table, a huge hewed log standing on
four legs; a pot, kettle, and skillet, and a few tin and pewter dishes
were all the furniture. The boy Abraham climbed at night to his bed of
leaves in the loft, by a ladder of wooden pins driven into the logs.

This life has been vaunted by poets and romancers as a happy and
healthful one. Even Dennis Hanks, speaking of his youthful days when
his only home was the half-faced camp, says, "I tell you, Billy, I
enjoyed myself better then than I ever have since." But we may
distrust the reminiscences of old settlers, who see their youth in the
flattering light of distance. The life was neither enjoyable nor
wholesome. The rank woods were full of malaria, and singular epidemics
from time to time ravaged the settlements. In the autumn of 1818 the
little community of Pigeon Creek was almost exterminated by a
frightful pestilence called the milk-sickness, or, in the dialect of
the country, "the milk-sick." It is a mysterious disease which has