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<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER">“<b>TWO
ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES</b></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER"><b>Jim
& Marie Watt</b></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER"><b>Tel:
<a href="tel:253-517-9195" target="_blank">253-517-9195</a> - Email:
<a href="mailto:jmbetter@gmail.com" target="_blank">jmbetter@gmail.com</a></b></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER"><b>Web:
<a href="http://www.2rbetter.org/" target="_blank">www.2rbetter.org</a></b></p><p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER">March 14, 2013</p><p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER">
<br></p><p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER"></p><p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER">
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</p><p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER">“<font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>HE
LOVED ME TRULY” – Lincoln’s Step-mother.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>By
Bernadine Bailey & Dorothy Walworth</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>The
Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. (February 1945 issue)</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in" align="CENTER"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>THE
BRIDE rode with her husband on the high front seat of the jolting
wagon. She was 31 years old, and, in 1819, that was middle-aged, for
most pioneer women died early. It was a December day, cold for
Kentucky, and they were headed north toward forest country. “I
reckon it’ll be fine weather,” she said, for she was the sort to
make the best of things.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Yesterday
Tom had arrived on horseback, all the way from his Indiana farm, at
her house in Elizabethtown. He had come straight to the point: “Miss
Sally, I have no wife and you no husband. I came a-purpose to marry
you. I knowed you from a girl and you knowed me from a boy. I’ve no
time to lose. If you’re willin’, let it be done straight off.”</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>That
morning they had been married at the Methodist parsonage. The
preacher wrote down that she, Sarah Bush Johnston, had been three
years a widow and Tom’s wife had died last winter. The horses and
wagon Tom had borrowed waited outside. The wagon was piled high with
her household goods, so that there was scarcely room for her three
children. Tom had two children of his own; he hadn’t told them he
was bringing back a new mother. There was a shadow in her blue-gray
eyes when she thought about that. Maybe they’d feel she didn’t
belong.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>A
raft ferried the wagon across the half-frozen Ohio River. The air
sharpened; the wheels sank to their hubs in snow. After five days
they came to a log cabin in a small clearing on Little Pigeon River.
It had no windows, and the door was only a deerskin-covered opening.
A stick chimney plastered with clay ran up the outside.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Tom
hallooed and a little boy ran out of the door. He was thin as a
scarecrow, and wore a ragged shirt and tattered deerskin pants. But
it was the look in his eyes that went to Sarah’s heart, although it
was a look she couldn’t put a name to. She got down from the wagon,
opened her arms and folded him close.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in">“<font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>I
reckon we’ll be good friends,” she said. “Howdy, Abe Lincoln.”</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>She
had never been in the wilderness before; she had known small-town
comfort. This was a one-room cabin, with no real floor, only packed
dirt. The bedstead was a makeshift of boards laid on sticks against
the wall, with a mattress of loose cornhusks. The bedcovers were
skins and cast-off clothing. Ten-year-old Abe and his 12-year-old
sister had always slept on piles of leaves up in the loft, to which
they climbed by pegs fastened to the wall. The furniture was some
three-legged stools and a table axed smooth on top, bark side under.
Dennis Hanks, an 18-year-old cousin of Tom’s first wife, Nancy
Hanks, was living with the family and had been trying to cook with
the help of a Dutch oven, one battered pot, and a couple of iron
spoons. Although she must have expected a place far better than this,
all Sarah said was, “Tom, fetch me a load of firewood. I aim to
heat some water.”</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>This
new stepmother with the rosy face and the bright curly hair wasted no
time. As soon as the water steamed, she brought out of her own
belongings a gourd full of homemade soap. Then, in front of the hot
fire, she scrubbed Abe and his sister and combed their matted hair
with her own clean shell comb. When the wagon was unpacked, little
Abe, who had not said a word, ran his bony fingers over such
wonderful things as a walnut bureau, a clothes chest, a loom and real
chairs. And that night, when he went to bed in the loft, he did not
find the leaves; she had thrown them outdoors. He had a feather
mattress and a feather pillow, and enough blankets so he was warm all
night.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>In
a couple of weeks, a body wouldn’t have known the place. Sarah had
what folks called “faculty”; she worked hard and she could make
other people work, too. Even Tom, who meant well but was likely to
let things slide. She never said he must do thus and so; she was too
wise and too gentle. But somehow Tom found himself making a real door
for the cabin and cutting a window, like she wanted. He put down a
floor, chinked up the cracks between the logs, white-washed the
inside walls. Abe couldn’t get over how sightly it was. And she
wove Abe shirts out of homespun cloth, coloring them with dye she
steeped out of roots and barks. She made him deerskin breeches that
really fitted, and moccasins, and a coonskin cap. She had a mirror
and she rubbed it bright and held it up so’s he could see himself –
it was the first time he had ever seen himself – and he said, “Land
o’Goshen, is that <i>me</i>?”</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Sometimes,
in the early mornings, when Sarah laid a new fire in the ashes, she
got to thinking it was queer how things come about. When Tom Lincoln
had courted her, 14 years ago, she had turned him down for Daniel
Johnston. Tom had been 12 years married to Nancy Hanks, who died so
sudden from the “Milk sick.” And now, after all these years, Tom
and she were together again, with his children and her children to
feed and do for.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>The
cabin was 18 feet square and there were eight people under its flimsy
roof. Sarah was taking what was left of two households, along with
the orphan boy, Dennis Hanks. Somehow she must make them into a
family of folks who loved each other; she wanted them to feel like
they had always been together. There was plenty of chance for
trouble, what with the two sets of young’uns who had never laid
eyes on each other till now, and all the stories Abe and his sister
had heard folks tell about stepmothers. Those first weeks, Sarah felt
mighty anxious. Especially about Abe, though he did what she said and
never answered her back. Once she saw him looking at her real serious
when she was putting some johnnycake into the oven. “All my life
I’m goin’ to like johnnycake best,” he said suddenly, and then
scooted through the door. You couldn’t figure Abe out. As Dennis
said, “There’s somethin’ peculiarsome about Abe.”</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Maybe,
if it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have lived to be a man. He
had always grown so fast and never had enough to eat. But now, when
he had eaten enough johnnycake and meat and potatoes that were cooked
through and not just burned on top, he stopped looking so pinched and
putty-color. And he wasn’t so quiet any more. Now he had some flesh
on his bones, he wasn’t solemn. Why, he was fuller of fun than
anybody. He learned to tell yarns, like his father, but he tried them
out on Sarah first, and she laughed in the right places. She stood up
for him, too, when he’d laugh out loud, all of a sudden, at things
nobody else could understand, and Tom thought he was being sassy.
“Abe’s got a right to his own jokes,” Sarah said.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Sometimes
Sarah thought, all to herself, that she loved Abe more than her own
children. But she didn’t really. It was just that she knew, deep
down in her heart where she told nobody but God, that Abe was
somebody special, who didn’t belong to her but was hers to keep for
a while.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>When
Abe was little, Tom hadn’t minded his walking nine miles to the
“blab school” where the scholars learned their letters by saying
them over and over out loud. But now Abe was older and stronger, Tom
didn’t see why he shouldn’t stay home and chop down trees and
cradle wheat or hire out to the neighbors for husking corn at 30
cents a day. Of course, he felt kind of proud when the neighbors came
to have Abe write their letters with the pen he had made out of a
buzzard’s quill and the brier-root ink. But Abe was “reachin’
too fur” when he kept reading books instead of clearing swamps; Tom
told Abe you didn’t need to know so almighty much to get along.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>If
Sarah hadn’t taken Abe’s part against his father, Abe wouldn’t
have got as much schooling as he did, though goodness knows it wasn’t
much. He learned, as the folks said, “by littles.” But through
the years she held out against Tom, no matter if Tom said she was
plumb crazy.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Abe
would rather read than eat. He’d read in the morning, soon’s it
was light enough to see; he’d read in the evening when the chores
were done; he’d read when he plowed, while the horse was resting at
the end of the row. He walked 17 miles to borrow books from Lawyer
Pitcher at Rockport. <i>Aesop’s Fables. Robinson Crusoe. Pilgrim’s
Progress. Shakespeare. The Statutes of Indiana.</i> When his borrowed
Weeks’ <i>Life of Washington</i> got rained on, he worked three
full days to pay for it. Once he gave a man 50 cents for an old
barrel and found Blackstone’s <i>Commentaries</i> at the bottom of
it, and you’d think he’d found a gold mine. He began reading late
at night by the fire, and when Tom complained, Sarah said, “Leave
the boy be.” She always let him read until he quit of his own
accord, and if he fell asleep there on the floor she would get a
quilt and wrap it gently around him.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>He
did his ciphering on a board, and when the board got too black, he’d
plane it off and start again. If he read something he liked a lot,
he’d write it down. He was always writing, and was most always out
of paper. He’d put charcoal marks on a board, for a sign of what he
wanted to write, and when he got paper he’d copy it all down. And
he’d read it out loud to Sarah by the fire, after Tom and the rest
had gone to bed. “Did I make it plain?” he always asked her. It
made her real proud when he asked her about his writing, and she
answered him as well as anybody could who didn’t know how to read
or write.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>They
told each other things they told nobody else. He had dark spells when
nobody but her could make him hear. Spells when he thought it was no
use to hope and to plan. Abe needed a lot of encouraging.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>In
1830, Tom decided to look for better farm land in Illinois, and the
family moved to Coles County on Goose Nest Prairie. There Abe helped
his father build the two-room cabin where Sarah and Tom were to spend
the rest of their lives. The place was hardly built when the day came
that Sarah had foreseen, the day when Abe would leave home. He was a
man grown, 22 years old, and he had a chance to clerk in Denton
Offut’s store over in New Salem. There was nothing more she could
do for Abe; for the last time she had braved out Tom so’s Abe could
learn; for the last time she had kept the cabin quiet so’s Abe
could do his reading.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>At
first he came back often, and, later on, after he got to be a lawyer,
he visited Goose Nest Prairie twice a year. Every time Sarah saw him,
it seemed like his mind was bigger. Other folks’ minds got to a
place and then stopped, but Abe’s kept on growing. He told her
about his law cases, and, as time went on, he told her about his
going to the state legislature and his marrying Mary Todd. After Tom
died, in 1851, Abe saw to it that she didn’t want for anything.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>When
she heard Abe was going to Charleston for his fourth debate with
Stephen A. Douglas, she went there, too, without saying a word to
Abe. It would be enough – it had always been enough – just to
watch him. She was one of the crowd on the street as the parade went
by. There was a big float drawn by a yoke of oxen, carrying three men
splitting rails, and a big sign, “Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter,
the Ox Driver, the Giant Killer.” Was that her Abe? And now here he
came, riding in a shiny black carriage, and tipping his tall black
hat right and left. Was that her Abe? She tried to make herself
small, but he saw her and made the carriage stop. Then, right in
front of everybody, he got out of the carriage and came over and put
his arms around her and kissed her. Yes, that was her Abe.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>She
wasn’t the crying kind, but she cried when he was elected
President. Alone, where nobody could see her. In the winter of 1861,
before he went to Washington, he crossed the state to see her, coming
by train and carriage in the mud and slush to say good-bye. He
brought her a present, a length of black alpaca for a dress; it was
too beautiful to put scissors into; after Abe went she’d just take
it out and feel of it once in a while.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Abe
looked tired, and he had a lot on his mind, but they had a fine talk.
Even when they were silent, they still said things to each other, and
he still set store by what she thought. When he kissed her good-bye,
he said he’d see her soon, but she knew somehow that she would not
see him again.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Four
years later, they came and told her he was dead. The newspapers wrote
the longest pieces about his real mother, and that was like it should
be, but some folks came and asked her what sort of boy Abe had been.
And she wanted to tell them, but it was hard to find the words. “Abe
was a good boy,” she said. “He never gave me a cross word or
look. His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to run together.”
And then she added, “He loved me truly, I think.”</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b>Often,
during the four years that remained to her, she would sit of an
evening and think of Abe. Being a mother, she did not think about him
as President, as the man about whom they sang, “We are coming,
Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong.” She remembered him
as a little boy. She was baking johnnycake for him; she was weaving
him a shirt; she was covering him with a blanket when he had fallen
asleep over his books, trying to keep him safe from the cold.</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><i><b>Sarah
Bush Lincoln was buried beside her husband in Shiloh Cemetery. Her
death, on December 10, 1869, passed unnoticed by the nation. For many
years she was not even mentioned by historians and biographers. Not
until 1924 were the graves of Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln marked
with a suitable stone. More recently, their Goose Nest Prairie home
site has been made into a state park, with a reproduction of the
two-room cabin which Abraham Lincoln helped to build. And only in the
last few years have Americans come to know that, when Abraham Lincoln
said, “All that I am I owe to my angel mother,” he was speaking
of his stepmother.</b></i></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font style="font-size:11pt"><b><u>NOTE:</u>
So how does the above touch you? It shows a side of Lincoln that is
most real, and that meant much to him – to the depths of his being.
I trust it touched you as deeply as it touched me. Jim Watt</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.01in;margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
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