This family was rich in the possession of several books, which Abe read through time and again, according to his usual custom.  One of the books was the ‘Kentucky Preceptor,’ from which Mrs. Crawford insists that he ’learned his school orations, speeches, and pieces to write.’  She tells us also that ’Abe was a sensitive lad, never coming where he was not wanted’; that he always lifted his hat, and bowed, when he made his appearance; and that ‘he was tender and kind,’ like his sister, who was at the same time her maid-of-all-work.  His pay was twenty-five cents a day; ’and when he missed time, he would not charge for it.’  This latter remark of Mrs. Crawford reveals the fact that her husband was in the habit of docking Abe on his miserable wages whenever he happened to lose a few minutes from steady work.  The time came, however, when Lincoln got his revenge for all this petty brutality.  Crawford was as ugly as he was surly.  His nose was a monstrosity—­long and crooked, with a huge mis-shapen stub at the end, surmounted by a host of pimples, and the whole as blue as the usual state of Mr. Crawford’s spirits.  Upon this member Abe levelled his attacks, in rhyme, song, and chronicle; and though he could not reduce the nose he gave it a fame as wide as to the Wabash and the Ohio.  It is not improbable that he learned the art of making the doggerel rhymes in which he celebrated Crawford’s nose from the study of Crawford’s own ‘Kentucky Preceptor.’”

Lincoln’s sister Sarah was warmly attached to him, but was taken from his companionship at an early age.  It is said that her face somewhat resembled his, that in repose it had the gravity which they both inherited from their mother, but it was capable of being lighted almost into beauty by one of her brother’s ridiculous stories or sallies of humor.  She was a modest, plain, industrious girl, and was remembered kindly by all who knew her.  She was married to Aaron Grigsby at eighteen, and died a year later.  Like her brother, she occasionally worked at the houses of the neighbors.  She lies buried, not with her mother, but in the yard of the old Pigeon Creek meeting-house.

A story which belongs to this period was told by Lincoln himself to Mr. Seward and a few friends one evening in the Executive Mansion at Washington.  The President said:  “Seward, you never heard, did you, how I earned my first dollar?” “No,” rejoined Mr. Seward.  “Well,” continued Mr. Lincoln, “I belonged, you know, to what they call down South the ‘scrubs.’  We had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell.  After much persuasion, I got the consent of mother to go, and constructed a little flatboat, large enough to take a barrel or two of things that we had gathered, with myself and the bundle, down to the Southern market.  A steamer was coming down the river.  We have, you know, no wharves on the Western streams; and the custom was, if passengers