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Show THE FOREFATHERS OF LINCOLN. All Pioneers and a Strain of Tragedy Runs Through Their History. Abraham Lincoln's forefnthors were pioneers men who left their homes to open up tho wilderness and ninko tho way plain for others to follow them. Kor ono hundred nnd seventy years, over since the flr.st American Lincoln enmc from Knglnnd to Massachusetts, In 1G38, thoy had been moving slowly westward ns new settlements woro mndo In tho forest. They fnced solitude, soli-tude, privation nnd all tho dangers nnd hardships that besot men who tako up their homes where only beasts and wild men hnvo hnd homes before; but they continued to press steadily forward, for-ward, though they lost fortune and sometimes even llfo Itself In their wcstwnrd progress. Hack In Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania nnd New Jersey somo of the Llncolus had been men of wealth nnd Influence. In Kentucky, where tho futuro President was born, on Keb. 12, 1809, his pnrents lived In deep poverty Their homo was u small log cabin of th'- rudest kind, anil nothing seemed moro unlikely than that their child, coming Into the world In such humhlo surroundings, wns destined to he tho grentest man of his time. True to his rnco, ho nlso was to bo a pioneer not Indeed, like his ancestors, a londer Into now woods nnd unexplored fields, hut a pioneer of a nobler and grander sort, 1 directing tho thoughts of men ever j townrd tho right, and leading tho American peoplo, through difficulties and dangers and a mighty war, to ! peaco nnd freedom. ! Tho story of this wonderful man be- 1 gins ami ends with a tragedy, for his j grandfather, also named Abraham, , was killed by a shot from un Indian's 1 lllio whllo pentfeubly at work with his threo sons on tho edgo of their frontier fron-tier clenrlng. Eighty-one years later the President himself met death by an assassin's bullet. The murderer of ono was n savage of tho forest; tho murderer of tho othor that far moro cruel thing, a savage ot civilization. From Helen Nlcolny's "Tho Hoys' Llfo of Abrnham Lincoln, In St. Nicholas. Nich-olas. A |
