Note 8 — Chapter III

While this manuscript was in process of writing, Professor Raymond, of Berea College, Kentucky, enumerating his summer engagements for the season of 1919, informed me of a funeral he was engaged to preach in August of a boy who died ten years ago. The boy's companions have by this time grown to manhood, but the service will be held: and before this book is published doubtless will have been held according to immemorial custom in that region. This is not because there has been no preacher in its vicinity within ten years; nor is there any reason to suppose that the delay in the case of Lincoln's mother was due to the utter absence of ministers. They were not abundant, certainly; but there is no reason whatever to suppose that in the interval between the death and funeral of Nancy Hanks no preacher had been in the neighborhood of Pigeon Creek.