Читать книгу Why We Love Lincoln онлайн
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Oh, pale woman of the twentieth century, sighing for a mission in the great world’s affairs! Perhaps there may be a suggestion for you in the simple story of what Sarah Bush did for Abraham Lincoln and, through him, for the ages. Did not the two malaria-racked and care-driven mothers who lived in the rough-hewn Lincoln cabin do more to influence the political institutions of mankind than all the speeches and votes of women since voting was first invented?
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Even at the age of ten years the frontier lad was a hard worker. When he was not wielding the axe in the forest, he was driving the horses, threshing, ploughing, assisting his father as a carpenter. He also “hired out” to the neighbors as ploughboy, hostler, water-carrier, baby-minder or doer of odd chores, at twenty-five cents a day. He suddenly began to grow tall, and there was no stronger youth in the community than the lank, loose-limbed boy in deerskins, linsey-woolsey, and coonskin cap, who could make an axe bite so deep into a tree.