Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/40

10 him, and felt interested to make a study of him, avers that he was a man of great native reasoning powers and fine social magnetism, reminding him of his illustrious son; but that, having received no education, drill, or discipline, he knew nothing of persistency of effort in a continuous line, nor of the laws of thrift or financial cause and effect; that he evidently was industrious, though shifting rapidly from one thing to another; that he was candid and truthful, popular with his neighbors, and brave to temerity. He was very stoutly built, about five feet ten inches high, and weighed nearly two hundred pounds; his desire was to be on terms of amity and sociability with every one. He had a great stock of border anecdotes and professed a marvellous proclivity to entertain by "spinning yarns" and narrating his youthful experiences. He was an inveterate hunter, as, indeed, were most of the pioneers. In both Kentucky and southern Indiana, in the vicinage of his homes, every man and boy owned a rifle, and it was unsafe and also unusual to go through the woods unarmed. Game, particularly deer, was one of the chief staples of existence. Before Thomas had attained his majority, he wended his way on foot across the Cumberland Mountains, to eastern Tennessee, where he worked on a farm for his uncle Isaac, who had settled on one of the affluents of the Holstein River. Upon his return to Kentucky, he entered as an apprentice to learn the cabinetmaker's trade