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Humble Beginnings
The cornerstone of the Kentucky temple was laid a century ago, 13 years before the dedication of the memorial in Washington. But instead of a statue inside or tablets carved with Lincoln's words, the birthplace monument contains a crude one-room hut with a mud-and-stick chimney a replica of the mythic log cabin. Putting a dirt-floor hovel inside a columned temple is a bit weird, yes. On the one hand, it is a way of sanctifying the Lincolnian ideal of upward mobility. On the other hand, the transfiguration from squalor to shrine sanitizes Lincoln's life story and in this way makes it harder for us to understand the intensity of his ideas about money. Lincoln knew the dead-end life of an undeveloped economy: poor, nasty, brutish and short. The romance of the log cabin masks a grim reality.
When Lincoln was born here on Sunday, Feb. 12, 1809, he entered a world as harsh and primitive as if he had been born a thousand years earlier. The simple act of giving birth put his mother in mortal danger, and her only protection was the old 'granny woman' summoned from miles away. Her baby was washed in water carried uphill from a dripping spring, then wrapped in animal skin against the winter cold and put in a bed of corn husks standing on a damp earth floor beside a smoky fire.

A. 어휘
humble 겸손한, 초라한, 소박한. cornerstone 초석. dedication 개관, 獻納(헌납).
statue 像(상). tablet 銘板(명판), 알약. carve 새기다, 조각하다. crude 투박한, 조잡한.
mud 진흙. stick 나뭇가지, 막대기, 장작. replica 複製(복제). mythic 신화적인.
log cabin 통나무집. dirt-floor 흙바닥. hovel 곳간, 광.
column 圓柱(원주). cf. columned temple 원주신전.
weird 기묘한, 괴상한, 무시무시한. sanctify 신성하게 하다.
upward mobility 상향이동(계층상승). transfiguration 변형, 변모.
squalor 더러움, 누추함. shrine 殿堂(전당), 祭壇(제단).
sanitize (청소와 소독을 하여) 위생적으로 하다. intensity 강렬함. dead-end 막다른.
nasty 몹시 더러운. brutish 야만적인, 동물적인. short 궁핍한, 모자라는.
mask 가리다, 숨기다, 덮다. grim 엄한, 가차없는. primitive 원시적인.
mortal 치명적인, 죽음을 면할 수 없는. granny woman 産婆(산파). cf. granny 노파.
summon 불러오다, 소환하다.
drip 물방울이 떨어지다. dripping spring 물방울이 떨어져서 생기는 샘물.
corn husks 옥수수 껍질. damp 습기 찬, 축축한. earth floor 흙바닥.

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In later years, Lincoln allowed his supporters to portray him as a sort of backwoods superman, for already the young nation was beginning to glamorize its frontier roots. Even in the heat of the 'rail splitter' campaign of 1860, however, he resisted the idea that life in the wilderness was grand and pure. All the hardship and sorrow of what he called 'stinted living' could be condensed, Lincoln said, into a single line from the poet Thomas Gray: 'the short and simple annals of the poor.' His strongest boyhood memories were of death and near death: the time he almost drowned, the time he was brained by the kick of a horse, the early deaths of his younger brother and beloved mother and eventually his sister Sarah.
Another monument, this one at Lincoln's boyhood home in south-central Indiana, comes a bit closer to the dark reality especially if you approach the place in winter, as the Lincoln family did when Abe was 7 years old. A sharp wind drives scattered snowflakes, and as you walk deeper into the woods, you might try to imagine the first months, before the tiny cabin was built, when the little family huddled for shelter under a flimsy three-sided windbreak.

A. 어휘
portray ...의 초상을 그리다, 묘사하다.
backwoods 미개척상태의 삼림지대, 奧地(오지)의. glamorize ...을 돋보이게 하다.
frontier roots 변경 미개척지에서 살아간 조상.
rail-splitter (통나무를 쪼개어) 울타리 가로장을 만드는 사람.(아브라함 링컨의 별명).
stint 제한하다. stinted living 궁핍한 삶. condense 요약하다, 압축하다.
annals 年代記(연대기). Thomas Gray 18세기 영국의 시인. drown 익사하다.
brain 골통을 부수다. scatter 흩뿌리다, 살포하다. snowflakes 눈송이, 雪片(설편).
huddle 몸을 웅크리다, 떼를 짓다. shelter 피난처, 은신처, 집. flimsy 부서지기 쉬운.
windbreak 바람막이.