oln-like,--prominent cheek bones, temple, nose, and chin;
but best of all is that twinkling drollery in the eye that flashed in
the White House during the dark days of the Civil War."

Uncle Dennis's recollections go back to the birth of Abraham Lincoln. To
use his own words: "I rikkilect I run all the way, over two miles, to
see Nancy Hanks's boy baby. Her name was Nancy Hanks before she married
Thomas Lincoln. 'Twas common for connections to gather in them days to
see new babies. I held the wee one a minute. I was ten years old, and it
tickled me to hold the pulpy, red little Lincoln. The family moved to
Indiana," he went on, "when Abe was about nine. Mr. Lincoln moved first,
and built a camp of brush in Spencer County. We came a year later, and
he had then a cabin. So he gave us the shanty. Abe killed a turkey the
day we got there, and couldn't get through tellin' about it. The name
was pronounced Linkhorn by the folks then. We was all uneducated. After
a spell we learnt better. I was the only boy in the place all them
years, and Abe and me was always together."

Dennis Hanks claims to have taught his young cousin to read, write, and
cipher. "He knew his letters pretty wellish, but no more. His mother had
taught him. If ever there was a good woman on earth, she was one,--a
true Christian of the Baptist church. But she died soon after we
arrived, and Abe was left without a teacher. His father couldn't read a
word. The boy had only about one quarter of schooling, hardly that. I
then set in to help him. I didn't know much, but I did the best I could.
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 some ink out of blackberry briar-root and a little
copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas ate the paper after a
while. I made Abe's first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We had no
geese them days. After he learned to write his name he was scrawlin' it
everywhere. Sometimes he would write it in the white sand down by the
crick bank and leave it there till the waves would blot it out. He
didn't take to books in the beginnin'. We had to hire him at first, but
after he got a taste on't it was the old story--we had to pull the sow's
ears to get her to the trough, and then pull her tail to get her away.
He read a great deal, and had a wonderful memory--wonderful. Never
forgot anything."

Lincoln's first reading