I make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months’ work.  You say, if I will furnish you the money, you will deed me the land, and if you don’t pay the money back, you will deliver possession.  Nonsense!  If you can’t now live with the land, how will you then live without it?  You have always been kind to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you.  On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eighty times eighty dollars to you.

     Affectionately your brother,
     A. LINCOLN.

In other letters he wrote even more sharply to his thriftless step-brother.

     Shelbyville, Nov. 4, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:—­When I came into Charleston, day before yesterday, I learned that you are anxious to sell the land where you live, and move to Missouri.  I have been thinking of this ever since, and cannot but think such a notion is utterly foolish.  What can you do in Missouri better than here?  Is the land any richer?  Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without work?  Will any body there, any more than here, do your work for you?  If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you can not get along anywhere.  Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good.  You have raised no crop this year; and what you really want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it.  Part with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never after own a spot big enough to bury you in.  Half of what you will get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought.  Now, I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery.  I feel that it is so even on your own account, and particularly on mother’s account.  The eastern forty acres I intend to keep for mother while she lives; if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her; at least, it will rent for something.  Her dower in the other two forties she can let you have, and no thanks to me.  Now, do not misunderstand this letter.  I do not write it in any unkindness.  I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face the truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away all your time.  Your thousand pretences for not getting along better are all nonsense.  They deceive nobody but yourself. Go to work is the only cure for your case.

     Sincerely yours,
     A. LINCOLN.

In still another letter he reveals his tender solicitude for his step-mother, as well as his care for his step-brother’s unfortunate children.

     Shelbyville, Nov. 9, 1851