The Child's Book of American Biography Part 5

"How big is your trunk?"

"This size," stretching her hands apart.

"Pooh, I'll carry that trunk to the station for you, myself. Where is it?"

The little girl pointed to the hall, and in a minute Mr. Lincoln, with his tall silk hat on his head, his long coat tails flying out behind, the trunk on his shoulder, was striding to the railroad station, as the now happy little girl skipped beside him. He was not going to have the child disappointed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "How big is your trunk?" _Page 88._]

Mr. Lincoln had a big heart. It never bothered him to stop long enough to do a kindness. One bitterly cold day he saw an old man chopping wood.

He was feeble and was shaking with the cold. Mr. Lincoln watched him for a few minutes and then asked him how much he was to be paid for the whole lot. "One dollar," he answered, "and I need it to buy shoes." "I should think you did," said the lawyer, noticing that the poor old man's toes showed through the holes of those he was wearing. Then he gently took the axe from the man's hands and said: "You go in by the fire and keep warm, and I'll do the wood." Mr. Lincoln made the chips fly. He chopped so fast that the pa.s.sers-by never stopped talking about it.

Abraham Lincoln was known to be honest, unselfish, and clear-headed. He had grown very wise by much reading and study. Finally the people of the United States paid him the greatest honor that can come to an American.

They made him President. Yes, this man who had taught himself to write in the Kentucky log cabin was President of the United States!

As President, Mr. Lincoln lived in style at the White House. But he was just the same quiet, modest man that he had always been. He was busier, that was all.

When President Lincoln spoke to the people, or sent letters (messages, they are called) to Congress, every one said: "What a brain that man has!" But he used very short, simple words. Once he gave a reason for this. He said it used to make him angry, when he was a child, to hear the neighbors talk to his father in a way that he could not understand.

He would lie awake, sometimes, half the night, trying to think what they meant. When he thought he had at last got the idea, he would put it into the simplest words he knew, so that any boy would know what was meant.

This got to be a habit, and even in his great talk at Gettysburg the beautiful words are short and plain.

One day when Lincoln was running the ferry-boat for the man I have spoken of before, he saw at one of the river landings some negro slaves getting a terrible beating by their master. He was only a boy, but he never forgot the sight, and one of the things he brought about when he became President of the United States was the freedom of the black people.

There are a great many lives and stories about Lincoln which you will read and enjoy, and it is certain that the more you know of this great man, Dear "Honest Abe," the better you will love him.

ROBERT EDWARD LEE

Small Robert Lee, of Virginia, aged five, was playing one day with another boy of his own age, whose mother was visiting Mrs. Lee. The Lees had lived for two centuries in the beautiful brick mansion, "Stratford,"

on the Potomac River. While the boys played on the veranda, there was the sound of busy feet inside the house, and an air of bustle and hurrying to and fro. Robert knew the cause of this and was feeling very happy. His father, Colonel Robert E. Lee, was coming home from Mexico, where he had done brave things in the Mexican War. The story of this had been in the papers, and though Robert had not seen his father for two years and sometimes could not remember just how he looked, he knew from the way people mentioned Colonel Lee's name that he was a man to be proud of.

When Eliza, Robert's black mammy, called him in to be dressed, there was trouble. He would not wear what she had ready for him. He was the Colonel's namesake, and if his father was coming home, nothing was nice enough but his best frock of blue and white.

Small Robert had his way about the frock. His hair was freshly curled, and he rushed down to the broad hall, where the family were waiting for Colonel Lee. The lady visitor had pinned a rose in her hair, and the other little boy had been dressed in his prettiest clothes. Pretty soon there were shouts of "Here he comes--here he comes!" and they could see Colonel Lee, in a handsome uniform, riding his chestnut horse, Grace Darling.

He sprang from the horse and up the steps, and when he had greeted the older ones, he sang out: "Where's my little boy--where's Robbie?" He seized the child nearest him and kissed him half a dozen times.

But it wasn't Robert that he kissed. It was the other boy!

For a minute Robert cried, but his father had plenty of kisses for him when he found what a mistake he had made, and he whispered something to Robert that made everything all right. There was a mustang pony on the way from Mexico for his little son!

This pony was pure white. A faithful Irish servant taught Robert to ride in a short time, and he was the proudest boy in the world when he rode out on Santa Anna beside his father on Grace Darling. Robert bragged a good deal to his playmates about Grace Darling, because she had carried his father all through the Mexican War and had the scars of seven bullets on her sides.

Colonel Lee loved animals and taught all his children to be kind to their pets. When the family lived in Arlington, "Spec," a lively black and tan terrier, went everywhere with them, even to church. Colonel Lee thought he made the children restless, so one Sunday, when they started for church, he shut Spec in a chamber in the second story. Spec looked out of the window for awhile. It was open, and he soon made up his mind that he would rather be with his friends. So he jumped to the ground, ran as fast as he could, and walked into the pew just behind the family. After that he was allowed to go to church every Sunday.

Colonel Robert E. Lee was a very handsome man. When he and Mrs. Lee were going out in the evening, the children always begged to sit up and see them start. They never saw any man or any picture of a man they thought so beautiful as their own father.

General Lee was not just a good leader of soldiers; he knew how to make everyone mind, and although he was the best playmate his children had, he was very firm with them. No slipshod ways were allowed in his house.

No, indeed! If his boys and girls were not tidy about their clothes, faithful in their lessons, polite, and truthful, they found their father stern enough.

When their father was so quick at sports and games and could plan such perfectly splendid holidays, it did seem pretty hard to the Lee children that he was so often sent away on war duties. But wherever he was, he found time from his military affairs to write long letters to his children, and these were so playful and told of so many strange things that it partly made up for his absence. The neighboring playmates used to watch for those letters almost as eagerly as the family, and probably they envied the Lee children sometimes when their father came for a visit, wearing some new honor or t.i.tle. For as he was wise and good and brave, he did not fail to rise higher and higher in rank. His father had been a general under George Was.h.i.+ngton and had taught his son that there is no grander honor for a man than to defend his country. And in order that Robert should make a fine soldier, he had been trained at West Point. When he had proved how keen and skilful he was, Abraham Lincoln, then president of the United States, asked Robert E. Lee, who had become a general, to take command of all the armies of the Union.

But general Lee was much troubled in his mind. Just then there was danger of the northern and southern States fighting against each other.

If the people of the different States should really grow so angry that they came to blows, Lee felt he must stand by Virginia, because that was his father's State. Indeed, the Lees had lived there since 1642, and Robert Lee loved every inch of its soil. He felt sad enough when he found there must be fighting, but he could not accept Lincoln's offer, so he gave up his high place in the United States Army and took the post of Major-general among the Virginian soldiers.

Then the Lee family had to do without their father and chum for four long years. They had grown up by this time, and all their childhood pets were dead. Grace Darling's place was taken by Traveller, an iron-gray horse with black points. He was so large and strong it did not seem possible to tire him out. He carried General Lee all through the Civil War. He often went cold and hungry, but he loved his master and would come when he heard the general's whistle or call, no matter how far away he might be. The soldiers loved Lee, too, and they obeyed his slightest wish.

The Civil War was long and cruel, as all war is, and at the end Lee had to yield because his men were starving. But he is counted as one of the greatest generals known in history, and his fame will never die.

The little Robert E. Lee, who rode the mustang pony, is now a gray-haired man. He has written the life of his father and has told how General Lee became a college president after the War. The students loved their president as well as the soldiers loved their general, and they always felt proud of him as he went galloping past them on dear old Traveller after the duties were over for the day. Good old Traveller deserved a medal, if ever a horse did, for sharing the dangers of her gallant master, General Robert E. Lee.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

Have you ever happened to see a book that cost a thousand dollars?

A man who loved birds and knew a great deal about them drew pictures of all the kinds to be found in our country, calling these drawings, when they were colored and bound together _The Birds of North America_. It took four volumes to hold all these pictures, and each one of these books costs a thousand dollars. There were only seventy-five or eighty of these sets of bird books made, but you can see them in the Boston Public Library, the Lenox and Astor libraries in New York city, and at several colleges and private homes. Each one of these books is more than three feet long and a little over two feet wide, and is so heavy that it takes two strong men to lift it on to a rack when some one wants to look at the pictures. If you should look through all four books, you would see more than a thousand kinds of birds, all drawn as big as life, and each one colored like the bird itself.

You may be sure it took the maker of these books many, many years to travel all over the United States to find such a number of birds. The man's name was John James Audubon. He slept in woods, waded through marshes and swamps, tramped hundreds of miles, and suffered many hards.h.i.+ps before he could learn the colors and habits of so many birds.

He always said his love for birds began when his pet parrot was killed.

It happened this way.

One morning when John James was about four years old and his nurse was giving him his breakfast, the little parrot Mignonne, who said a lot of words as plainly as a child, asked for some bread and milk. A tame monkey who was in the room happened to be angry and sulking over something. He sprang at Mignonne, who screamed for help. Little John James shouted too, and begged his nurse to save the bird, but before any one could stop the ugly monkey's blows, the parrot was dead.

The monkey was always kept chained after that, and John James buried his parrot in the garden and trimmed the grave with shrubs and flowering plants. But he missed his pet and so roamed through the woods adjoining his father's estate, watching the birds that flew through them. By and by he did not care for anything so much as trying to make pictures of these birds, listening to their songs, finding what kind of nests they built, and at what time of year they flew north or south.

John James lived in Nantes, France, when he was a small boy, although he was born in Louisiana. His father was a wealthy French gentleman, an officer in the French navy, and was much in America, so that John James was first in France and then in America until he was about twenty-five, at which time he settled in his native country for good. Few men have loved these United States better than he.

John James did not care much for school. Figures tired his head. He loved music, drawing, and dancing. His father was away from home most of the time, and his pretty, young stepmother let the boy do quite as he pleased. She loved him dearly, and as he liked to roam through the country with boys of his age, she would pack luncheon baskets day after day for him, and when he came back at dusk, with the same baskets filled with birds' eggs, strange flowers, and all sorts of curiosities, she would sit down beside him and look them over, as interested as could be.

Some years later, when John James's father put him in charge of a large farm near Philadelphia, the young man bought some fine horses, some well-trained dogs, and spent long summer days in hunting and fis.h.i.+ng. He also got many breeds of fowl. It is a wonder that with all the leisure hours he had, and the large amount of spending money his father allowed him, he did not get into bad habits, but young Audubon ate mostly fruit and vegetables, never touched liquor, and chose good companions. He did like fine clothes and about this time dressed rather like a fop. I expect the handsome fellow made a pretty picture as he dashed by on his spirited black horse, in his satin breeches, silk stockings and pumps, and the fine, ruffled s.h.i.+rts which he had sent over from France.

Anyway, a sweet young girl, Lucy Bakewell, lost her heart to him. Only as she was very young, her parents said she must not yet be married. And while he was waiting for her, he fixed over his house, and with a friend, Mr. Rozier, and a good-natured housekeeper, lived a simple, country life. You would have enjoyed a visit to him about this time. He turned the lower floor into a sort of museum. The walls were festooned with birds' eggs, which had been blown out and strung on thread. There were stuffed squirrels, opossums, and rac.o.o.ns; and paintings of gorgeous colored birds hung everywhere. Audubon had great skill in training animals and one dog, Zephyr, did wonderful tricks.

When Audubon and Lucy married, they went to Kentucky, where he and his friend Rozier opened a store. But Rozier did most of the store work, as Audubon was apt to wander off to the woods, for he had already decided to make this book about birds. His mind was not on his business, as you can see when I tell you that one day he mailed a letter with eight thousand dollars in it and never sealed it! The only part of the business he enjoyed were the trips to New York and Philadelphia to buy goods. These goods were carried on the backs of pack horses, and a good part of the journeys led through forests. He lost the horses for a whole day once, because he heard a song-bird that was new to him, and as he followed the sound of the bird so as to get a sight of it, he forgot all about the pack horses and the goods.

By and by his best friends said he acted like a crazy man. Only his wife and family stood by him. Finally when his money was gone, and there were two children growing up, things looked rather desperate. But Lucy, his wife, said: "You are a genius, and you know more about birds than any one living. I am sure all you need is time to show the world how clever you are. I will earn money while you study and paint!"

So Audubon traveled to seek out the haunts of still more birds, while Lucy went as governess in rich families, or opened private schools where she could teach her own two boys as well as others. She earned a great deal of money, and when he had made all his pictures and was ready to publish the books, she had nearly enough to pay the expense, and gave it to him.