Abraham Lincoln; A letter to his step-brother

December 24, 1848

Dear Johnston:

Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said tome, "We can get along very will now," but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again.

Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work, in any one day. You do not have very much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it.

This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break this habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in.

You are now i n need of some ready money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will give you money for it.

Let father and your boys take charge of your things at home - prepare for a crop, and make the crip, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get. And to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise yu that for every dollar you will, between this and thefirst of May, get for your own labor either in money or in your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar.

By this If you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your wirk. In this, I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines, in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home - in Coles County.

Now, if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just a deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in Heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in Heaven very cheaply, for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five month's work. You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and if you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession - Nonsense! If you can't now live with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not now mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eight times eighty dollars to you.

Affectionately,

Your brother,

A. Lincoln