Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1878 — Lincoln’s Springfield Home. [ARTICLE]

Lincoln’s Springfield Home.

The little brown cottage in Springfield, 111., in which Mr. Lincoln lived before he went to Washington, still remains nearly as he left it, furniture and aIL It is related that it had at first bnt one story, and that Mrs- Lincoln for many years unavailfngly coaxed her husband to raise the roof. At length she seized an opportunity when, he was attending court in an odjoining town to employ workmen and have the half-story added, windows put in, paint put on, all completed—save payment of bills—before his return. Coming up the street, he comprehended the situation at a glance, but feigning bewilderment, and pretending not to recognize the old place, he walked past as if searching for home, till his wife—who was watching behind the shutters—called after fiim; “Ablins! Abriml”

Mb. Forsyth plainly puts the situation thus: “ During the past few years there has been a constant shrinkage of values. Farms, and horses, and cattle, and hogs, and grain, and labor, both skilled and unskilled, have depreciated from 10 to 60 per cent. But there has been no abatement of taxes, no corresponding reduction of the salaries of the legislators and public functionaries, and no cutting down of the public expense has taken place,’’