Your letter of the 7th was received night before last. I very
cheerfully send you the twenty dollars, which sum you say is
necessary to save your land from sale. It is singular that you
should have forgotten a judgment against you; and it is more
singular that the plaintiff should have let you forget it so long,
particularly as I suppose you have always had property enough to
satisfy a judgment of that amount. Before you pay it, it would be
well to be sure you have not paid it; or, at least, that you can
not prove you have paid it. Give my love to Mother, and all the
connections.

Affectionately your son,

A. LINCOLN.


[Written on same page with above.]

Dear Johnston:--

Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think it best to comply
with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little, you
have said to me, "We can get along very well now," but in a very
short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now this can
only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I
think I know. You are not _lazy_, and still you _are_ an _idler_. I
doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's
work, in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and
still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you