The party went up the river in the early summer and separated in St. Louis. Abraham walked in company with John Johnston from St. Louis to Coles County, and spent a few weeks there with his father, who had made another migration the year before. His final move was to Goose Nest Prairie, where he died in 1851, [Footnote: His grave, a mile and a half west of the town of Farmington, Illinois, is surmounted by an appropriate monument erected by his grandson, the Hon. Robert T. Lincoln.] at the age of seventy-three years, after a life which, though not successful in any material or worldly point of view, was probably far happier than that of his illustrious son, being unvexed by enterprise or ambition. Abraham never lost sight of his parents. He continued to aid and befriend them in every way, even when he could ill afford it, and when his benefactions were imprudently used. He not only comforted their declining years with every aid his affection could suggest, but he did everything in his power to assist his stepbrother Johnston--a hopeless task enough. The following rigidly truthful and yet kindly letters will show how mentor-like and masterful, as well as generous, were the relations that Mr. Lincoln held to these friends and companions of his childhood: 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 that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty, and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit. It is more important to them because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it easier than they can get out after they are in.