Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/69

Rh among the young folks ensued; and ere long, in all directions, the ruddy and cheerful blaze of hearth-fires, gleaming through clear window panes instead of oiled paper, attested the advent of real civilization. To the genial requirements of this new order of life, Abraham Lincoln was no delinquent. The entertaining qualities which were captivating in his manhood's prime, found exuberant vent in his youthful glow. Boylike, he was frivolous rather than sedate, reckless rather than responsible, and the mental vigor and volume which evolved the Cooper Institute speech or yielded the Emancipation Proclamation, were expended in satirical poems and coarse pasquinades, which had no apparent range or objects beyond diversion or petty social revenges, and were confined to the fleeting moment and to the little backwoods coterie which was wont to gather in the store or blacksmith's shop at Gentryville, or in the "corn-huskings" or "log-rollings" thereabouts.

Abe was no empty-headed country beau, however. He was even then more of a student than gallant. A story is told of a conversation he had, under idyllic circumstances, with a pretty girl of fifteen, where his playing the schoolmaster instead of the lover was rather resented by his fair companion. As the two young people sat barelegged on a log and dangled their feet in the limpid waters of Little Pigeon Creek, and talked the light and frothy chatter of their age, the sun sank low in the west, and the little miss exclaimed: "See, Abe, the sun's going down!" "No," returned Abe with the importance of superior knowledge, "the sun doesn't go down; it's we that do the sinking." But the pert auditor