l half of general responsibility. For this service the
elder Gentry paid him eight dollars a month and his passage home on a
steamboat. It was the future President's first eager look into the wide,
wide world.

Abraham's devotion to his books and his sums stands forth in more
striking light from the fact that his habits differed from those of most
frontier boys in one important particular. Almost every youth of the
backwoods early became a habitual hunter and superior marksman. The
Indiana woods were yet swarming with game, and the larder of every cabin
depended largely upon this great storehouse of wild meat.[2] The Pigeon
Creek settlement was especially fortunate on this point. There was in
the neighborhood of the Lincoln home what was known in the West as a
deer-lick--that is, there existed a feeble salt-spring, which
impregnated the soil in its vicinity or created little pools of brackish
water--and various kinds of animals, particularly deer, resorted there
to satisfy their natural craving for salt by drinking from these or
licking the moist earth. Hunters took advantage of this habit, and one
of their common customs was to watch in the dusk or at night, and secure
their approaching prey by an easy shot. Skill with the rifle and success
in the chase were points of friendly emulation. In many localities the
boy or youth who shot a squirrel in any part of the animal except its
head became the butt of the jests of his companions and elders. Yet,
under such conditions and opportunities Abraham was neither a hunter nor
a marksman. He tells us:

"A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of
his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and
Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and
killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger
game."

[Footnote 2: Franklin points out how much this resource of the
early Americans contributed to their spirit of independence by
saying:

"I can retire cheerfully with my little family into the boundless
woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence
to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger."

(See "The Century Magazine," "Franklin as a Diplomatist," October,
1899, p. 888.)]

The hours which other boys spent in roaming the woods or lying in ambush
at the deer-lick, he preferred to devote to his effort at mental
improvement. It can hardly be claimed that he