February 12, 1809
Winter winds were whipping round the cabin in the Kentucky woods. They cried at the chinks in the stout log walls, but they couldn't get inside the firelit cabin where a new boy baby lay safe and warm in his mother's arms. Tom Lincoln smiled at two-year-old Sarah: "Look now, here's your brother, Abraham. He'll soon be a 'taggin' along after you, shirttail a 'flappin'."

The thing to do is to read - Carl Sandburg's biography of Mr. Lincoln was a favorite - and find out as much as I can of his life, his times, and his home places. I drove across Missouri, past Sam Clemen's house in Hannibal, over the big river and in Illinois. My heart jumped a bit at the sight of the Sangamon County line. I knew that that was Abe's home territory, when he was a young man in New Salem. Then I drove into Springfield and saw where he lived. I walked where he walked then drove back home to my computer and my watercolors, to add my notions of the skinny boy who became such a great and complicated man. No wonder there are so many books about him.