me.

He was now nineteen years old. He was very tall--nearly six feet four
inches in height. He was as strong as a young giant. He could jump
higher and farther, and he could run faster, than any of his fellows;
and there was no one, far or near, who could lay him on his back.

Although he had always lived in a community of rude, rough people, he
had no bad habits. He used no tobacco; he did not drink strong liquor;
no profane word ever passed his lips.

He was good-natured at all times, and kind to every one.

During that winter, Mr. Gentry, the storekeeper in the village, had
bought a good deal of corn and pork. He intended, in the spring, to load
this on a flatboat and send it down the river to New Orleans.

In looking about for a captain to take charge of the boat, he happened
to think of Abraham Lincoln. He knew that he could trust the young man.
And so a bargain was soon made. Abraham agreed to pilot the boat to New
Orleans and to market the produce there; and Mr. Gentry was to pay his
father eight dollars and a half a month for his services.

As soon as the ice had well melted from the river, the voyage was begun.
Besides Captain Lincoln there was only one man in the crew, and that was
a son of Mr. Gentry's.

The voyage was a long and weary one, but at last the two boatmen reached
the great southern city. Here they saw many strange things of which they
had never heard before. But they soon sold their cargo and boat, and
then returned home on a steamboat.

To Abraham Lincoln the world was now very different from what it had
seemed before. He longed to be away from the narrow life in the woods of
Spencer county. He longed to be doing something for himself--to be
making for himself a fortune and a name.

But then he remembered his mother's teachings when he sat on her knee in
the old Kentucky home, "Always do right." He remembered her last words,
"I know you will be kind to your father."

And so he resolved to stay with his father, to work for him, and to give
him all his earnings until he was twenty-one years old.

* * * * *

VII.--THE FIRST YEARS IN ILLINOIS.

Early in the spring of 1830, Thomas Lincoln sold his farm in Indiana,
and the whole family moved to Illinois. The household goods were put in
a wagon drawn by four yoke of oxen. The kind step-mother and her
daughters rode also in the wagon.

Abraham Lincoln, with a long whip in his hand, trudged through the mu