Show MADE PLEDGE AND TO IT lincoln always teetotaler according to national advocate A kentuckian lan by birth rocked in the rough cradle of poverty in a little log cabin and scantily furnished trained in the versley ot necessity attending school twice in the neighborhood tor a few weeks at a time being compelled to walk four miles each way to do so transplanted to indiana to a home life of poverty a poverty so grat that the family lacked protection tram the rain and cold out of such fc childhood grew the farm hand the rail splitter the flat boatman the captain of the black hawk wara the country mer chant the country lawyer the tour times elected legislator the re presen in congress and the war dent such in brief says one 1 the story of abraham lincoln the great typical american as in him were found in a pre eminent degree the best features of our new world life honesty and simplicity and truthfulness when lincoln was a boy almost everybody drank and temperance had less advocates than at present among those who were working for temper ance in that early day was old uncle john as he was called who gathered the people together tor meetings in the rough log schoolhouses of the sparsely settled communities in that section of the country people came out of curiosity but he often found little sympathy for his one long to be rp night he made his ending with an invitation to come forward and sign the pledge there wai only one who moved as the story goes A tall and far from handsome boy got to his and came up the aisle even in rough audience he made an ungainly 1 appearance in his sadly outgrown clothes coarse and too short in trousers and sleeves but a hush tell on the rough men as that boy with deter ir min atlon in his face stooped to writer the name abraham lincoln on the pledge the work of that night lives in history lincoln always attributed mucha of his success in live to his temper ance principles and years afterwards when as president of the united states he had the pleasure of enter kalning old uncle john in the white house he said to him I 1 owe more to you than to almost any one of whom I 1 can think it I 1 had not signed the pledge with ou in the days of my youthful temptation I 1 should probably have gone the way of a majority of my early companions who ched drunk ards lives and now fill drunkards graves there was never any letting down in lincoln s principles whatever the circumstances when I 1 was a young man long ago before the sons of temperance as an organization had an existence I 1 in a humble way made temperance speeches and I 1 think I 1 may say that to this day I 1 have never by my example belled what I 1 then said national advocate |