Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/30

 Thirteen months passed. The widower, who was not disposed to be both father and mother to his children, started for his native Kentucky in quest of a wife, and there he found Sally Bush, who had once rejected his suit, had married his rival Johnstone, and was now a widow with three children. He called upon her, and proposed, without beating about the bush.

"Well, Miss Johnstone," said Thomas, "I have no wife, and you have no husband. I came a purpose to marry you. I knowed you from a gal, and you knowed me from a boy. I have no time to lose, and if you are willing, let it be done straight off."

"Tommy," was her reply, "I know you well, and have no objections to marrying you; but I cannot do it straight off, as I owe some debts that must first be paid."

The ceremony, however, took place on the following morning, the debts having been paid in the meantime, and very speedily the married pair and all the goods which the widow had possessed, were placed upon a wagon, and drawn by four horses, a journey of some days, to Thomas Lincoln's cabin in Indiana. These goods were of considerable value. There was a bureau which had cost forty dollars, and which Thomas considered sinfully magnificent, and urged her to sell it. But she was no Lincoln and refused to do this. There was a table, a set of chairs, a large clothes chest, some cooking utensils, knives and forks, bedding, and other articles essential to civilized living.

Abraham Lincoln never forgot the wonder and delight with which he beheld the arrival and unpacking of this wagon-load of unimagined treasure. Neither he nor his sister had ever heard of such things. The new mother, on her part, was wofully disappointed on seeing the wretched cabin in which she was to pass her days; for it seems that Thomas Lincoln had drawn upon his