The Backwoods Boy: The Boyhood and Manhood of Abraham Lincoln

Three children stood in front of a rough log-cabin in a small clearing won from the surrounding forest. The country round about was wild and desolate. Not far away was a vast expanse of forest, including oaks, beeches, walnuts and the usual variety of forest trees.

We are in Indiana, and the patch of land on which the humble log-cabin stood is between the forks of Big Pigeon and Little Pigeon Creeks, a mile and a half east of Gentryville, a small village not then in existence.

The oldest of the three children was Nancy Lincoln, about twelve years old. Leaning against the cabin in a careless attitude was a tall, spindling boy, thin-faced, and preternaturally grave, with a swarthy complexion. He was barefoot and ragged; the legs of his pantaloons, which were much too short, revealing the lower part of his long legs; for in his boyhood, as in after days, he ran chiefly to legs.

Who in the wildest flight of a daring imagination would venture to predict that this awkward, sad-faced, ragged boy would forty years later sit in the chair of Washington, and become one of the rulers of the earth? I know of nothing more wonderful in the Arabian Nights than this.

The second boy was a cousin of the other two children—Dennis Hanks, who, after the death of his parents, had come to live in the Lincoln household.

The sun was near its setting. It seemed already to have set, for it was hidden by the forest trees behind which it had disappeared.