t
money-wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get;
and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you,
that, for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next
May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own
indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if
you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten
more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this I do not
mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead-mines, or the
gold-mines in California; but I mean for you to go at it, for the
best wages you can get, close to home, in Coles County. Now, if you
will do this you will soon be out of debt, and, what is better, you
will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again.
But if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be
in just as deep as ever. You say you would almost give your place
in heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in heaven very
cheap; for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the
seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. You say,
if I will furnish you the money, you will deed me the land, and if
you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession.
Nonsense! If you can't now live with the land, how will you then
live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not mean
to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my
advice, you will find it worth more than eighty times eighty
dollars to you.

Affectionately your brother,
A. LINCOLN.

In other letters he wrote even more sharply to his thriftless
step-brother.

Shelbyville, Nov. 4, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:--When I came into Charleston, day before yesterday, I
learned that you are anxious to sell the land where you live, and
move to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever since, and
cannot but think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do
in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you
there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without
work? Will any body there, any more than here, do your work for
you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than
right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you can
not get along anywhe