Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/86

56 came into that region. The value and price of property, and population increased an hundred-fold during his stay there, and although the house of "Lincoln" was augmented in substantial wealth by the generous contributions of Sallie Bush Lincoln, yet this family left that region, after over thirteen years' sojourn, as poor as it came.

Abraham's sister had married Aaron Grigsby at the age of eighteen, and had died, in childbed, within a year thereafter. It was a sad blow to her brother—he reflected upon the preceding burial. He had everything in common with his mother and sister, but little with his father, and as he heard the clods reverberate dully from the grave which contained the early companion of his few joys and many sorrows, the pent-up grief of his stricken soul found vent in convulsive sobs which brought tears to the little sympathetic assembly. There were but the least few cords that bound Abraham Lincoln to existence: one of them snapped at the grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln; and yet another at the new-made grave in the weird forest. What have I to live for? he repeated to himself over and over. Even his foster-sisters, who had been company and companions to him, were hardly so longer, for Matilda, the eldest, had married his second-cousin, Dennis Hanks, and Sarah, the younger, had married another second-cousin, Levi Hall; and they each were rearing children. John D. Johnston, his foster-brother, alone remained, and was only apparently a companion to Abraham. In their common and mutual adolescence, they were closely allied in all things, but as the mind of one delved by self-introspection into the strata of the