[Sidenote: Damon, p. 80.]

Otherwise his life at this time differed little from that of ordinary
farm-hands. His great strength and intelligence made him a valuable
laborer, and his unfailing good temper and flow of rude rustic wit
rendered him the most agreeable of comrades. He was always ready with
some kindly act or word for others. Once he saved the life of the town
drunkard, whom he found freezing by the roadside, by carrying him in
his strong arms to the tavern, and working over him until he revived.
It is a curious fact that this act of common humanity was regarded as
something remarkable in the neighborhood; the grateful sot himself
always said "it was mighty clever of Abe to tote me so far that cold
night." It was also considered an eccentricity that he hated and
preached against cruelty to animals. Some of his comrades remember
still his bursts of righteous wrath, when a boy, against the wanton
murder of turtles and other creatures. He was evidently of better and
finer clay than his fellows, even in those wild and ignorant days. At
home he was the life of the singularly assorted household, which
consisted, besides his parents and himself, of his own sister, Mrs.
Lincoln's two girls and boy, Dennis Hanks, the legacy of the dying
Sparrow family, and John Hanks (son of the carpenter Joseph with whom
Thomas Lincoln learned his trade), who came from Kentucky several
years after the others. It was probably as much the inexhaustible good
nature and kindly helpfulness of young Abraham which kept the peace
among all these heterogeneous elements, effervescing with youth and
confined in a one-roomed cabin, as it was the Christian sweetness and
firmness of the woman of the house. It was a happy and united
household: brothers and sisters and cousins living peacefully under
the gentle rule of the good stepmother, but all acknowledging from a