kes driven into the ground, for Tom Lincoln had not yet laid
the puncheon floor of their cabin. Abe's bed was a pile of dry leaves
laid in one corner of the loft to which he climbed by means of a ladder
of pegs driven into the wall, instead of stairs.

Their surroundings were such as to delight the heart of a couple of
care-free children. The forest was filled with oaks, beeches, walnuts
and sugar-maple trees, growing close together and free from underbrush.
Now and then there was an open glade called a prairie or "lick," where
the wild animals came to drink and disport themselves. Game was
plentiful--deer, bears, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks and birds of all
kinds. This, with Tom Lincoln's passion for hunting, promised good
things for the family to eat, as well as bearskin rugs for the bare
earth floor, and deerskin curtains for the still open door and window.
There were fish in the streams and wild fruits and nuts of many kinds to
be found in the woods during the summer and fall. For a long time the
corn for the "corndodgers" which they baked in the ashes, had to be
ground by pounding, or in primitive hand-mills. Potatoes were about the
only vegetable raised in large quantities, and pioneer families often
made the whole meal of roasted potatoes. Once when his father had "asked
the blessing" over an ashy heap of this staple, Abe remarked that they
were "mighty poor blessings!"

But there were few complaints. They were all accustomed to that way of
living, and they enjoyed the free and easy life of the forest. Their
only reason for complaint was because they had been compelled to live in
an open shed all winter, and because there was no floor to cover the
damp ground in their new cabin--no oiled paper for their one window, and
no door swinging in the single doorway--yet the father was carpenter and
cabinet maker! There is no record that Nancy Lincoln, weak and ailing
though she was, demurred even at such needless privations.

About the only reference to this period of their life that has been
preserved for us was in an odd little sketch in which Mr. Lincoln wrote
of himself as "he."

"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."

Though shooting was the principal sport of the