of age, I did not know much; still, somehow, I could read and write and cipher to the rule of three, and that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I have now made upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time, under the pressure of necessity. I was raised to farm work at which I continued until twenty-two."

Life in Southern Indiana was like that in other back-woods regions, the story of which is familiar to all. Neighbors were few and distant. A sister of Mrs. Lincoln with her husband soon after settled near by, and this family furnished about the only society accessible to them for several years.

Educational advantages were few and primitive. In all, young Lincoln attended school less than a year, yet he made the most of that time and obtained a working knowledge of the rudiments, which he afterwards increased materially by home reading and study.

A man by the name of Hazel Dorsey was Lincoln's first teacher in Indiana. The school-house, which was built of logs, was distant nearly two miles from the Lincoln homestead. At school young Abraham gained the reputation of being a good scholar and soon won the affection of his teacher and playmates.

He was compelled to lose much time in school, in order to help his father split rails; yet upon his return he quickly regained his position in the class. During his short attendance upon this school he gained a knowledge of the rudiments which enabled him to continue his studies by himself and make rapid progress in them.

Farm work was never a congenial occupation, for

he seemed to feel, even then, that he was fitted for a higher sphere and was eager to make preparation for it. He was compelled to labor hard and incessantly, sometimes at home, and frequently for some neighbor who happened to be short of help. It is said that he was inclined to slight his work, and that he had inherited something of his father's shirking propensities. It was his great delight to stop in the midst of his labors and, mounting a stump, to make a speech to his fellow laborers, who were always ready to hear “Abe" speak, much to the disgust of their employer. He would select a subject, sometimes a text from the Bible, and embellish his harangue with stories and jokes, which, with the contortions of his awkward figure, would keep his hearers in a roar of laughter. When he went to the country store or to the mill, he was generally surrounded with loafers and often forgot his errand in his attempt to amuse his rude audience.

This propensity was a source of considerable annoyance to his father, who strove in vain to conquer it. One of his old neighbors' declared that "Abe was awful lazy." He says, "He worked for me frequently, a few days only at a time. He once told me that his father had taught him to work, but never learned him to love it. He would laugh and talk and crack jokes and tell stories all the time; didn't love to work, but did dearly love his pay." The following description is given of his personal appearance at the age of fifteen.' "He was growing

1 John Romine.

2 Lamon.

at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full height of six feet and four inches. He was long, wiry and strong; while his big feet and hands, and the length of his legs and arms, were out of all proportion to his small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy, and his skin was shrivelled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt and a cap made of the skin of an opossum or coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs and failed by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes. Twelve inches remained uncovered, and exposed that much of shinbone, sharp, blue and narrow."

He soon acquired an insatiable thirst for knowledge, although at first it required considerable persuasion to induce him to attend to the intellectual tasks set before him. There was no book in the house save the Bible, but this he never tired of reading, until his familiarity with it became remarkable. He used, frequently, in after-life to quote from it in his conversation and speeches, and the simplicity and clearness of his literary style was largely produced by his study of its matchless diction.

There were a few books of standard merit possessed by the different families in the neighborhood all of which he borrowed and read many times. Among them were Weem's "Life of Washington," "Esop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Arabian Nights" and the "Speeches of Henry Clay." He dearly loved to stretch himself out on the grass beneath the shadow of some great tree and pore over his book. During the long evenings he would lie at full length on the floor beside the great fireplace and read until the fire

went out. He was accustomed to write out with charcoal on bits of board the passages, which struck him most forcibly, and afterwards to coinmit them to memory.

He became intensely interested in the speeches of Henry Clay, many of which he committed to memory. His father was a Democrat and he had naturally inclined in that direction, but now he became an ardent admirer of the Kentucky statesman and a determined and persistent Whig, remaining of that political belief until he became one of the leaders of the young Republican party.

While on his way to Washington, in later years, to assume the duties of the Presidency, he passed through Trenton, N. J., and, in a speech before the State Senate, made the following allusion to the deep impression, which one of these books had made upon him:

"May I be pardoned if, on this occasion, I mention that, away back in my childhood, in the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, such an one as few of the younger members have seen, Weem's 'Life of Washington.' I remember all the accounts there given of the battle-fields and struggles for the liberties of the country; and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton. The crossing of the river, the struggle with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time, all fixed themselves in my memory more than any other single Revolutionary event, and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these early impressions last longer than any others. I recollect thinking then, boy even though I

was, that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that that thing which they struggled for, that something even more than national independence, that something that held out a great promise to all people of the world for all time to come, I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution and liberties of the people, shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made."

This same "Life of Washington" was the first book which he ever owned. He acquired possession of it, however, in a manner not wholly satisfactory to himself. He had borrowed it from a neighbor, named Crawford, who was not noted for his generosity. One night Lincoln took it to bed with him and continued to read until his pin knot lamp burned out, when he thrust the book into a crevice between the logs in the side of the house. During the night a severe storm came up and the book was soaked. He went to Mr. Crawford in the morning, and telling him of the mishap, offered to pay for the book. Crawford set him to work pulling cornfodder, and kept him at it for three days, making the young student pay an extortionate price in labor for an old and worn-out book. Young Lincoln was much dissatisfied with such parsimony, and afterwards unconsciously following the example of an old Greek poet, wrote several bits of doggerel verse, in which he ridiculed so forcibly the personal appearance of Crawford, that his flat nose and scowling visage became a byword throughout the whole community.

When he was ten years old his mother died after a