Abraham Lincoln's Letter to His Brother

Interesting letter I heard about on Dave Ramsey today --- An age old lesson!!!

Abraham Lincoln's Letter to His Brother

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 to me, "We can get along very well 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 not _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 very much dislike to work, and still you do not work 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; and 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 in 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 things at home--prepare for a crop, and make the crop; 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 you that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next 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 work. 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 as 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 months' 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.

It's not so bad

It's almost kinda nice, with no TV, books/mags to read, a generator that works (cept that weird popping noise it seems to make sometimes) and a bunch of candles.

Gene and Jingles are in bed. Wish I could take a picture! I asked Gene not to kick him out cuz he was so cute and sleeping and cuddled up. Now it's time for me to go to bed. Glad Jingles was there to warm up my spot! LOL

Going to let the generator run til it runs out of fuel, maybe it will be over 55 when we wake up! It was cold this morning, and when we got home from work, it was 49! Poor kitties! (and fish).

Ohhhhh.. the weather out side is frightful, me? i got.. a rifle.

Hey all...

Just wanted to let anyone know that was wondering about us, we're ok. We went on a little "adventure" today and drove to Red Oak Iowa to find a generator. They sold out while we were there so thank god we got there when we did! It dipped into our emergency fund, but we're going to do some rearranging and we'll be back up and running ok.

Anyway, we don't have complete power, but we do have heat and interestingly enough, we have phone and internet, but no cell phones. Kinda weird surfing the net by candlelight. Speaking of which, thanks Carol for all those candles, I have like *all* of them lit LOL.

Updating some pics I took this afternoon. I wish I had taken my camera when we went to Maryville, then Clarinda, then Red Oak, we saw a lot of stuff. Maryville was the worst really. Dave the insurance man down the street from my old house got it bad - crushed his car with a fallen branch. Good thing he's an insurance guy :)

Anyway - the pics - you can pull up the larger images, but I didn't want to resize everything so it will be BIG when you pull it up.

These are taken about 15 hours after the last ones so you can see some big differences.

Overall, we're ok. We're Blessed!

Last post - ICE STORM

Last but not least.... we're in the middle of an ice storm. I have a feeling I will officially miss my first day of work.

Hmm.. wait I missed a day for the flood of Ought-Seven.

I tried to take some pics out the back door as not to bother gene (bedroom in front) but my camera is flash-tarded today and would not take and I was NOT GOING OUT IN THE RAIN, not with a digital.

Trying to post the pics. Now blogger is being slow-tarded. If they don't make it tonight, I'll update tomorrow.

I admit, it would be nice to stay home (especially if there's no work to be had anyway). Sit around, eat soup, work on scrapbooks, decorate the tree. Tanner won't be going to school tomorrow that's for sure!



*I* am the slow-tarded one. Blogger did not fail me. I'm so sorry baby. ;)

Anyway, these are night time pics, taken from the safety of inside my house with the door open. Keep in mind I have a yellow bug light 'kay??

I think ice might officially suck. Pretty no? Suck yes?
Ah we agree.

more posting

I told you I was splitting this up.

Chris and Amy made it to Fort Bliss. They say it's not Blissful. Eh. Welcome to the army!

So anyway, all the pressies had to be mailed, did that stop us from buying 18 things for each child. *noooooo*. Gift cards woulda been cheap to mail. LOL. It's ok, I just wish we could see them open their stuff!

This is one of 3 boxes, Us and great-grandma/pa (hi Carol/Bud!) all went a little hog wild and they might not even have to buy santa presents. Look at that haul. I'm so proud of my packing skills I took a pic. Dayum. I should pack boxes for a living (and then shoot myself cuz how freaking boring would that be).

Snapshot of the upper cabinets now in the kitchen that has no cabinets on one side! Thanks amber/cole/copper for bringing them down! Once they are painting and new handles and lowers, and a countertop and a pantry and a desk and and and and....

they'll be great. LOL. Right now, I love them because they are hung, by us, while we were irritated at each other and they didn't fall off the wall. All in all, an accomplishment.