Meanwhile
the boy was growing to tall manhood, both in body and in mind. The
neighbors,] who failed to mark his mental growth, were greatly
impressed with his physical strength. The Richardson family, with whom Abe
seemed to have lived as hired man, used to tell marvelous tales of his prowess,
some of which may have grown somewhat in the telling. Mr. Richardson declared
that the young man could carry as heavy a load as "three ordinary men." He saw
Abe pick up and walk away with "a chicken house, made up of poles pinned
together, and covered, that weighed at least six hundred if not much
more."
When
the Richardsons were building their corn-crib, Abe saw three or four men getting
ready to carry several huge posts or timbers on "sticks" between them. Watching
his chance, he coolly stepped in, shouldered all the timbers at once and walked
off alone with them, carrying them to the place desired. He performed these
feats off-hand, smiling down in undisguised pleasure as the men around him
expressed their amazement. It seemed to appeal to his sense of humor as well as
his desire to help others out of their difficulties.
Another
neighbor, "old Mr. Wood," said of Abe: "He could strike, with a maul, a
heavier[87] blow than any other man. He could sink an ax deeper
into wood than any man I ever saw."
Dennis
Hanks used to tell that if you heard Abe working in the woods alone, felling
trees, you would think three men, at least, were at work there—the trees came
crashing down so fast.
On
one occasion
after
he had been threshing wheat for Mr. Turnham, the farmer-constable whose "Revised Statutes of Indiana" Abe had devoured, Lincoln was walking back, late at night from Gentryville, where he and a number of cronies had spent the evening. As the youths were picking their way along the frozen road, they saw a dark object on the ground by the roadside. They found it to be an old sot they knew too well lying there, dead drunk. Lincoln stopped, and the rest, knowing the tenderness of his heart, exclaimed:
after
he had been threshing wheat for Mr. Turnham, the farmer-constable whose "Revised Statutes of Indiana" Abe had devoured, Lincoln was walking back, late at night from Gentryville, where he and a number of cronies had spent the evening. As the youths were picking their way along the frozen road, they saw a dark object on the ground by the roadside. They found it to be an old sot they knew too well lying there, dead drunk. Lincoln stopped, and the rest, knowing the tenderness of his heart, exclaimed:
"Aw,
let him alone, Abe. 'Twon't do him no good. He's made his bed, let him lay in
it!"
The
rest laughed—for the "bed" was freezing mud. But Abe could see no humor in the
situation. The man might be run over, or freeze to death. To abandon any human
being in such a plight seemed too monstrous to him. The other[88] young men hurried on in the cold, shrugging their
shoulders and shaking their heads—"Poor Abe!—he's a hopeless case," and left
Lincoln to do the work of a Good Samaritan alone. He had no beast on which to
carry the dead weight of the drunken man, whom he vainly tried, again and again,
to arouse to a sense of the predicament he was in. At last the young man took up
the apparently lifeless body of the mud-covered man in his strong arms, and
carried him a quarter of a mile to a deserted cabin, where he made up a fire and
warmed and nursed the old drunkard the rest of that night. Then Abe gave him "a
good talking to," and the unfortunate man is said to have been so deeply
impressed by the young man's kindness that he heeded the temperance lecture and
never again risked his life as he had done that night. When the old man told
John Hanks of Abe's Herculean effort to save him, he added:
"It
was mighty clever in Abe Lincoln to tote me to a warm fire that cold night."
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