Affectionately,
     A. LINCOLN.

The step-brother, John Johnston, to whom the foregoing letter is addressed, was the cause of considerable anxiety to Lincoln.  It was with him that their parents resided, and frequent were his appeals to Lincoln to extricate him from some pecuniary strait into which he had fallen through his confirmed thriftlessness and improvidence.  “John Johnston,” Mr. Herndon says, “was an indolent and shiftless man, one who was ‘born tired.’  Yet he was clever, generous and hospitable.”  The following document affords a hint of Lincoln’s kindly patience as well as of his capacity for sound practical advice when it was much needed: 

DEAR JOHNSTON:—­Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to comply with now.  At the various times when I have helped you a little you have said to me, ‘We can get along very well now’; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again.  Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct.  What that defect is, I think I know.  You are not lazy, and still you are an idler.  I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work in any one day.  You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it.  This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit.  It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it easier than they can get out after they are in.  You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is that you shall go to work, ‘tooth and nail,’ for somebody who will give you money for it.  Let father and your boys take charge of things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money-wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that, for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar.  By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work.  In this I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead-mines, or the gold-mines in California; but I mean for you to go at it, for the best wages you can get, close to home, in Coles County.  Now, if you will do this you will soon be out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again.  But if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be in just as deep as ever.  You say you would almost give your place in heaven for $70 or $80.  Then you value your place in heaven very cheap; for I am sure you can, with the offer