Page:Abraham Lincoln, A Story and a Play.djvu/18

 for a farm. From morning till night his long arms were busy felling the trees or ploughing the ground for a garden. When his mother needed meal for making bread, the boy would fill some bags with corn, and then carry it on horseback to the mill seven miles away, to have it ground.

By the end of the year the boy had helped his father make a better home than the poor half-faced camp, but even now there were neither windows nor door nor floor. Soon afterwards Abraham's mother, who had borne so many hardships, suddenly became very ill.

There was no doctor at hand to save her, and she died, leaving her two children with their father to get along as best they could. How deeply Abraham had loved this tender mother, who had already done so much for him! He never forgot her, and whenever he spoke of her afterwards his voice grew soft and tender. He called her his "angel mother."

After she died, Abraham's sister Sarah, who was then only eleven years old, became the housekeeper. She cooked and sewed for her father and brother as best she could. It must have been hard work for the poor child, and she was