Little Abe Lincoln lived in a log cabin in Kentucky. When he was seven, his family moved across the Ohio River into Indiana, and lived all winter in an open shed called a “half-faced camp,” before his father built a better cabin, with bare earth for its floor. Tom Lincoln, Abe’s father, was “a mighty hunter.” He liked to shoot game better than the hard work of clearing land and farming. He thought Abe was timid because he did not like to kill harmless animals or see them suffer. During the fourteen years Abe lived in southern Indiana, he went to school a few weeks at a time--less than a year in all. A girl who went to school when he did, used to tell, after she became an old woman, that Abe’s first “composition” was against cruelty to animals. She always remembered how he read this sentence in it: “An ant’s life is as sweet to it as ours is to us.” One day Abe caught several lads laughing at a turtle as it moved slowly about, showing, as well as a dumb animal could, the misery it was in. For there were burning coals on its back, and the biggest boy stood by with a smoking shingle in his hand. This showed Abe how the hot coals came upon the terrapin’s back. Snatching the shingle from the big bully’s hand, he brushed them off and began [Illustration: THE BOY LINCOLN READING BY THE FIRELIGHT IN THE LOG CABIN IN WHICH HE WAS BORN.] to paddle the cruel boy with it, calling him a cowardly fellow for hurting a helpless turtle. Just before Abe was twenty-one, Father Lincoln moved to newer country in Illinois. Abe’s step-sisters were now married, so there was a big family going west in a lumbering wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. One of the step-sisters took with her a pet dog. It was in the midst of winter, and some of the rivers they had to cross were covered with ice. One day the little dog strayed away from the wagon and failed to come back until the Lincoln party had forded a shallow stream. After crossing, Abe, who was then driving the oxen, saw the poor little fellow jumping about and whining, afraid of being left behind. It was growing dark and they had to make their camp for the night. All the others were for leaving the “troublesome cur” to its fate. Mr. Lincoln, in telling of their moving to Illinois, said of this: “But I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog. Pulling off shoes and socks, I waded across the stream and triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under my arm. His frantic leaps of joy and other evidences of a dog’s gratitude amply repaid me for all the exposure I had undergone.” Many other stories are told of Abraham Lincoln’s kindness of heart. When he was a country lawyer he had to ride from one county seat to another, attending court. The judge and several attorneys rode from place to place where court was to be held. Lawyer Lincoln was the most popular man of them all, because of his good nature and his ready fund of funny stories.