acksmith was hammering over old nails on the anvil.

"Hello!" said Thomas Lincoln; "not doin' much to-day. I brought the
preacher over to call on you--he's a Tunker--has been to see the
school--he teaches himself--thought you'd want to know him."

"Glad you come. Here, sit down in the leather chair, and make yourself
at home. Been long in these new parts?"

"No, my friend; I have been to Illinois, but I have never been here
before. I am glad to see you."

[Illustration: STORY-TELLING AT THE SMITHY.]

"What do you think of the country?" said the blacksmith. "Think it is a
good place to settle in? Hope that you have come to cast your lot with
us. We need a preacher; we haven't any goodness to spare. You come from
foreign parts, I take it. Well, well, there's room for a world of people
out here in the woods and prairies. I hope that you will like it, and
get your folks to come. We'll do all we can for you. We be men of good
will, if we be hard-looking and poor."

"My good friend, I believe you. You are great-hearted men, and I like
you."

"Brainy, too. Let me start up the forge."

"Preacher, come here," said Thomas Lincoln. "I haven't had no edication
to speak of, but I've invented a new system of book-keepin' that beats
the schools. There's one of them there. The blacksmith keeps all of his
accounts by it. I've got one on a puncheon at home; did you notice it?
This is how it is; you may want to use it yourself. Come and look at
it."

On a rough board over the forge Thomas Lincoln had drawn a number of
straight lines with a coal, as are sometimes put on a blackboard by a
singing-master. On the lower bars were several cloudy erasures, and at
the end of these bars were initials.

"Don't understand it, do you? Well, now, it is perfectly simple. I
taught it to Aunt Olive, and she don't know more than some whole
families, though she thinks that she knows more than the whole creation.
Seen such people, hain't ye? Yes. The woods are full of 'em. Well, that
ain't neither here nor there. This is how it works: A man comes here to
have his horse shod--minister, may be; short, don't pay. Nothin' to pay
with but funeral sermons, and you can't collect them all the time. Well,
all you have to do is just to draw your finger across one of them lines,
and write his initials after it. And when he comes again, rub out
another place on the same lines."

"And when you have rubbed out all the places you could along that line,
how m