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lady1 and spent an entire day with her. She was then living on the farm her stepson had purchased and given her, eight miles south of the town of Charleston, in Illinois.
She died on the 10th of April, 1869.
The two sets of children in the Lincoln household — to their credit be it said — lived together in perfect accord.
Abe was in his tenth year, and his stepmother, awake to the importance of an education, made a way for him to attend school.
To her he seemed full of promise; and although not so quick of comprehension as other boys, yet she believed in encouraging his every effort.
He had had a few weeks of schooling under Riney and Hazel in Kentucky, but it is hardly probable that he could read; he certainly could not write.
As illustrating his moral make-up, I diverge from the chronological order of the narrative long enough to relate an incident which occurred some years later.
In the Lincoln family, Matilda Johnston, or ‘Tilda,
1 During my interview with this old lady I was much and deeply impressed with the sincerity of her affection for her illustrious stepson. She declined to say much in answer to my questions about Nancy Hanks, her predecessor in the Lincoln household, but spoke feelingly of the latter's daughter and son. Describing Mr. Lincoln's last visit to her in February, 1861, she broke into tears and wept bitterly. “I did not want Abe to run for President,” she sobbed, “and did not want to see him elected. I was afraid that something would happen to him, and when he came down to see me, after he was elected President, I still felt, and my heart told me, that something would befall Abe, and that I should never see him again. Abe and his father are in heaven now, I am sure, and I expect soon to go there and meet them.”
The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
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