ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Reading edition
His First Great Sorrow
I.
silencepostageautumnduties
finishedpreachersycamorecomfort
buriedgrievingministerfeeble
The summer passed, and autumn came. Then the poor mother's strength gave out. She could no longer go about her household duties. She had to depend more and more upon the help that her children could give her.
At length she became too feeble to leave her bed. She called the boy to her side. She put her arm around him and said: "My boy, I shall very soon leave you. I know that you will always be good and kind to your sister and father. Try to live as I have taught you, and to love your heavenly Father."
Then she fell asleep, never to wake again on this earth.
Under a big sycamore tree, half a mile from the house, the neighbors dug the grave for the mother of Abraham Lincoln. And there they buried her in silence and in great sorrow.
In all that new country there was no church; and no minister could be found to speak words of comfort and hope to the grieving ones around the grave.
But the boy remembered a preacher whom they had known in Kentucky. The name of this preacher was David Elkin. If he would only come!
And so, after all was over, the lad sat down and wrote a letter to David Elkin. Abraham was only a child nine years old, but he believed that the good man would remember his mother, and come.
It was no easy task to write a letter. Paper and ink were not things of common use, as they are with us. A pen had to be made from the quill of a goose.
But at last the letter was finished and sent to Kentucky. How it was carried I do not know, for the mails were few in those days, and postage was very high.
II.
uprightfordedfuneralmonths
justiceearliestsympathyhymns
rewardpreachedreverenceduty
Months passed. The leaves were again on the trees. The wild flowers were blossoming in the woods. At last the preacher came.
He had ridden a hundred miles on horseback. He had forded rivers and traveled through pathless woods. He had dared the dangers of the wild forest. And all in answer to the lad's letter.
He had no hope of reward save that which is given to every man who does his duty. He did not know that there would come a time when the greatest preachers in the world would envy him his sad task.
And now the friends and neighbors gathered again under the great sycamore tree. The funeral sermon was preached. Hymns were sung. A prayer was offered, and words of comfort were spoken.
From that time forward the mind of Abraham Lincoln was filled with high and noble thoughts. In his earliest childhood his mother had taught him to love truth and justice, to be honest and upright among men, and to honor God. These lessons he never forgot.
Long afterward, when the world had come to know him as a very great man, he said: "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."
—James Baldwin.