[Footnote 1:  Kentucky:  Abraham Lincoln was born on the banks of the Big South Fork (or branch) of Nolin Creek in Hardin (now La Rue) County, Kentucky.]

[Footnote 2:  Indiana:  the Lincoln family moved to a farm on Little Pigeon Creek, near Gentryville, in what is now Spencer County, Indiana.]

245.  The new log cabin with four sides to it; how the furniture was made; “Abe’s” bed in the loft.—­The Lincoln family stayed in that shed for about a year; then they moved into a new log cabin which had four sides to it.  They seem to have made a new set of furniture for the new house.  “Abe’s” father got a large log, split it in two, smoothed off the flat side, bored holes in the under side and drove in four stout sticks for legs:  that made the table.  They had no chairs,—­it would have been too much trouble to make the backs,—­but they had three-legged stools, which Thomas Lincoln made with an axe, just as he did the table; perhaps “Abe” helped him drive in the legs.

[Illustration:  HOME-MADE FURNITURE.]

In one corner of the loft of this cabin the boy had a big bag of dry leaves for his bed.  Whenever he felt like having a new bed, all that he had to do was to go out in the woods and gather more leaves.

He worked about the place during the day, helping his father and mother.  For his supper he had a piece of cornbread.  After he had eaten it, he climbed up to his loft in the dark, by a kind of ladder of wooden pins driven into the logs.  Five minutes after that he was fast asleep on his bed of sweet-smelling leaves, and was dreaming of hunting coons, or of building big bonfires out of brush.[3]

[Footnote 3:  Brush:  bushes and limbs of trees.]

246.  Death of “Abe’s” mother; the lonely grave in the woods; what Abraham Lincoln said of his mother after he had grown to be a man; what “Abe’s” new mother said of him.—­“Abe’s” mother was not strong, and before they had been in their new log cabin a year she fell sick and died.  She was buried on the farm.  “Abe” used to go out and sit by her lonely grave in the forest and cry.  It was the first great sorrow that had ever touched the boy’s heart.  After he had grown to be a man, he said with eyes full of tears to a friend with whom he was talking:  “God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her.”

[Illustration:  “ABE” LEARNING TO USE HIS AXE.]

At the end of a year Thomas Lincoln married again.  The new wife that he brought home was a kind-hearted and excellent woman.  She did all she could to make the poor, ragged, barefooted boy happy.  After he had grown up and become famous, she said:  “Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused to do anything I asked him:  Abe was the best boy I ever saw.”