His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a roving, shiftless, man, a carpenter by trade; after his marriage his wife taught him to read and to write his name, but here his education began and ended. Abraham Lincoln’s mother came, he said, “of a family of the name of Hanks,” about whom nothing good is recorded. Of his mother personally, almost nothing is known. [Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN] Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Kentucky. When he was seven years old, his father made one of his numerous moves, going to Indiana and taking up a claim of land. There he built what was called “a half-faced camp”--a log-shed open on one side; in this his family passed the winter. The next year Thomas Lincoln built a cabin; it had four walls, but for years it was left without floor, door, or window. Instead of steps there were pegs in the wall by means of which Abraham ascended to the loft where he slept. The furniture was rude and scanty. It consisted of a few stools, a rough table and bed, some pewter dishes, a skillet and a pot. Abraham was only nine years old when his mother succumbed to a fatal disease. As she lay on her death-bed she called her son and daughter to her and gave them her last charge. “Be good to one another,” she said, “love God and your kin.” The winter which followed was dreary and desolate for the motherless children. A few months later Thomas Lincoln brought to the cabin a second wife who was a mother indeed to the two little ones. She was thrifty and industrious, as well as kind and affectionate, and under her rule the family had more of the comforts of life than it had ever known before. Mrs. Lincoln insisted that ten-year-old Abe must be sent to school and so he trudged every day to the log schoolhouse a mile and a half from home. He was a diligent student, and he read every book on which he could lay his hands. These books were few in number; the Bible, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a history of the United States, and Weems’ “Life of Washington,” were read and re-read. His bookcase was a crack between the logs of the cabin wall. One night the binding of the “Life of Washington,” was injured by a driving storm; to pay the man from whom it was borrowed for the damage, Abe worked three days in his corn field. At night the boy would lie flat on the floor before the fire and cipher on a plank or a wooden shovel with a piece of charcoal; when the surface was covered with figures, he would erase them and begin anew. His father considered the hours spent in study as wasted time, and Abe was often called to put his books aside to grub and plow and mow. Such work was little to his taste; he said in later years, “his father taught him to work but never taught him to love work.” Abe grew fast and at seventeen he was over six feet tall. He was strong and active, but an awkward figure, in his homespun shirt, buckskin trousers, and cap of squirrel or coon skin.