"It is related by Black Hawk, in his Life, that some time before the War of 1812 one of the Indians had killed a Frenchman at Prairie des Chiens. 'The British soon after took him prisoner, and said they would shoot him next day. His family were encamped a short distance below the mouth of the Ouisconsin. He begged permission to go and see them that night, as he was _to die the next day_. They permitted him to go, after promising to return the next morning by sunrise. He visited his family, which consisted of a wife and six children. I can not describe their meeting and parting to be understood by the whites, as it appears that their feelings are acted upon by certain rules laid down by their _preachers_!--while ours are governed only by the monitor within us. He parted from his wife and children, hurried through the prairie to the fort, and arrived in time. The soldiers were ready, and immediately _marched out and shot him down_!' If this were not cold-blooded, deliberate murder on the part of the whites I have no conception of what constitutes that crime. What were the circumstances of the murder we are not informed; but whatever they may have been, they can not excuse a still greater barbarity." It belongs, like the story of so-called Umatilla in the "Log School-House on the Columbia," to a series of great legends of Indian character which the poet's pen and the artist's brush would do well to perpetuate. The examples of Indians who have valued honor more than life are many, and it is a pleasing duty to picture such scenes of native worth, as true to the spirit of the past. We have in this volume, as in the former book, freely mingled history, tradition, and fiction, but we believe that we have in no case been untrue to the fact and spirit of the times we picture, and we have employed fiction chiefly as a framework to bring what is real more vividly into view. We have employed the interpretive imagination merely for narrative purposes. Nearly all that has distinctive worth in the volume is substantially true to history, tradition, and the general spirit of old times in the Illinois, the Sangamon, and the Chicago; to the character of the "jolly old pedagogue long ago"; and to that marvelous man who accepted in youth the lesson of lessons, that "right makes might." 28 WORCHESTER STREET, BOSTON, MASS. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I.--INTRODUCED 1 II.--THOMAS LINCOLN'S FAMILY STORIES 17 III.--THE OLD BLACKSMITH'S SHOP AND THE MERRY STORY-TELLERS 33 IV.--A BOY WITH A HEART 55 V.--JASPER COBBLES FOR AUNT OLIVE.--HER QUEER STORIES 62 VI.--JASPER GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF HIS VISIT TO BLACK HAWK.--AUNT INDIANA'S WIG 75 VII.--THE EXAMINATION AT CRAWFORD'S SCHOOL 87