h. While expressing her
hope that they might live, as she had taught them to live, in the love
of their kindred and the service of God, Nancy Hanks Lincoln passed from
the miserable surroundings of her poor life on earth to the brightness
of the Beyond, on the seventh day after she was taken sick."

To the motherless boy the thought of his blessed mother being buried
without any religious service whatever added a keen pang to the
bitterness of his lot. Dennis Hanks once told how eagerly Abe learned to
write:

"Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal, or the p'int of a
burnt stick, on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country
town, and I made ink out of blackberry juice, briar root and a little
copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas would eat the paper after
a while. I made his first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We hadn't
no geese them days--to make good pens of goose quills."

As soon as he was able Abe Lincoln wrote his first letter. It was
addressed to Parson Elkin, the Baptist preacher, who had sometimes
stayed over night with the family when they lived in Kentucky, to ask
that elder to come and preach a sermon over his mother's grave. It had
been a long struggle to learn to write "good enough for a
preacher"--especially for a small boy who is asking such a favor of a
man as "high and mighty" as a minister of the Gospel seemed to him.

It was a heartbroken plea, but the lad did not realize it. It was a
short, straightforward note, but the good preacher's eyes filled with
tears as he read it.

The great undertaking was not finished when the letter was written. The
postage was a large matter for a little boy. It cost sixpence (equal to
twelve-and-a-half cents today) to send a letter a short distance--up to
thirty miles. Some letters required twenty-five cents--equal to fifty in
modern money. Sometimes, when the sender could not advance the postage,
the receiver had to pay it before the letter could be opened and read.
On this account letters were almost as rare and as expensive as
telegrams are today. When the person getting a letter could not pay the
postage, it was returned to the writer, who had to pay double to get it
back.

In those days one person could annoy another and put him to expense by
writing him and forcing him to pay the postage--then when the letter
was opened, it was found to be full of abuse, thus making a man pay for
insults to himself!

There was a