him to Spencer County, Indiana.” Sarah Bush Lincoln changed the character of the Lincoln home completely when she entered it, and there is no question of the importance of her influence upon the development of her step-son Abraham. She was a woman of great natural dignity and kindliness, and highly esteemed by all who knew her. She died on the 10th of December, 1869, at the old homestead in Coles County, Illinois. ] [Illustration: THE MARRIAGE BOND GIVEN BY THOMAS LINCOLN AT HIS MARRIAGE WITH SARAH JOHNSTON.—NOW FIRST PUBLISHED. From a tracing made by Henry Whitney Cleveland. ] [Illustration: BUCKTHORN VALLEY, WHERE LINCOLN WORKED AND HUNTED. After a photograph made for this biography. In this valley are located nearly all the farms on which Lincoln worked in his boyhood, including the famous Crawford place, where he and his sister Sarah were both employed as “help.” Visitors to the locality have pointed out to them numberless items associated with his early life—fields he helped to clear and till, fences he built, houses he repaired, wells he dug, paths he walked, playgrounds he frequented. Indeed, the inhabitants of Buckthorn Valley take the greatest pride in Lincoln’s connection with it. ] To a boy of seven years, free from all responsibility, and too vigorous to feel its hardships, such a journey must have been, as William Cooper Howells, the father of the novelist, says of his own trip from Virginia to Ohio, in 1813, “a panorama of delightful novelty.” Life suddenly ceased its routine, and every day brought forth new scenes and adventures. Little Abraham saw forests greater than he had ever dreamed of, peopled by strange birds and beasts, and he crossed a river so wide that it must have seemed to him like the sea. To Thomas and Nancy Lincoln the journey was probably a hard and sad one; but to the children beside them it was a wonderful voyage into the unknown. A NEW HOME IN INDIANA. On arriving at the new farm an axe was put into the boy’s hands, and he was set to work to aid in clearing a field for corn, and to help build the “half-face camp” which for a year was the home of the Lincolns. There were few more primitive homes in the wilderness of Indiana in 1816 than this of young Lincoln’s, and there were few families, even in that day, who were forced to practise more makeshifts to get a living. The cabin which took the place of the “half-face camp” had but one room, with a loft above. For a long time there was no window, door, or floor; not even the traditional deer-skin hung before the exit; there was no oiled paper over the opening for light; there was no puncheon covering on the ground. [Illustration: THE OLD SWIMMING-HOLE.