In pronouncing a eulogy on Henry Clay, Lincoln said: "His example
teaches us that one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he
can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably."
Endowed as he was with all the qualities that make a man truly great,
Lincoln's own life teaches above all other things the lesson he drew
from that of Henry Clay. Is there in all the length and breadth of the
United States to-day a boy so poor as to envy Abraham Lincoln the
chances of his boyhood? The story of his life has been told so often
that nothing new can be said about him. Yet every fresh reading of the
story fills the reader anew with wonder and admiration at what was
accomplished by the poor backwoods boy.
Let your mind separate itself from all the marvels of the twentieth
century. Think of a time when railroads and telegraph wires,
telephones, great ocean steamers, lighting by gas and electricity,
daily newspapers (except in a few centers), great circulating
libraries, and the hundreds of conveniences which are necessities to
the people of to-day, were unknown. Even the very rich at the beginning
of the nineteenth century could not buy the advantages that are free to
the poorest boy at the beginning of the twentieth century. When Lincoln
was a boy, thorns were used for pins; cork covered with cloth or bits
of bone served as buttons; crusts of rye bread were used by the poor as
substitutes for coffee, and dried leaves of certain herbs for tea.
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin
County, now La Rue County, Kentucky. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was
not remarkable either for thrift or industry. He was tall, well built,
and muscular, expert with his rifle, and a noted hunter, but he did not
possess the qualities necessary to make a successful pioneer farmer.
The character of the mother of Abraham, may best be gathered from his
own words: "All that I am or hope to be," he said when president of the
United States, "I owe to my angel mother. Blessings on her memory!"
It was at her knee he learned his first lessons from the Bible. With
his sister Sarah, a girl two years his senior, he listened with wonder
and delight to the Bible stories, fairy tales, and legends with which
the gentle mother entertained and instructed them when the labors of
the day were done.
When Abraham was about four years old, the family moved from the farm
on Nolin Creek to another about fifteen miles distant. There the first
great event in his life took place. He went to school. Primitive as was
the log-cabin schoolhouse, and elementary as were the acquirements of
his first schoolmaster, it was a wonderful experience for the boy, and
one that he never forgot.
In 1816 Thomas Lincoln again decided to make a change. He was enticed
by stories that came to him from Indiana to try his fortunes there. So,
once more the little family "pulled up stakes" and moved on to the
place selected by the father in Spencer County, about a mile and a half
from Gentryville. It was a long, toilsome journey through the forest,
from the old home in Kentucky to the new one in Indiana. In some places
they had to clear their way through the tangled thickets as they
journeyed along. The stock of provisions they carried with them was
supplemented by game snared or shot in the forest and fish caught in
the river. These they cooked over the wood fire, kindled by means of
tinder and flint. The interlaced branches of trees and the sky made the
roof of their bedchamber by night, and pine twigs their bed.
When the travelers arrived at their destination, there was no time for
rest after their journey. Some sort of shelter had to be provided at
once for their accommodation. They hastily put up a "half-faced
camp"--a sort of rude tent, with an opening on one side. The framework
of the tent was of upright posts, crossed by thin slabs, cut from the
trees they felled. The open side, or entrance, was covered with
"pelts," or half-dressed skins of wild animals. There was no ruder
dwelling in the wilds of Indiana, and no poorer family among the
settlers than the new adventurers from Kentucky. They were reduced to
the most primitive makeshifts in order to eke out a living. There was
no lack of food, however, for the woods were full of game of all kinds,
both feathered and furred, and the streams and rivers abounded with
fish. But the home lacked everything in the way of comfort or
convenience.
Abraham, who was then in his eighth year, has been described as a tall,
ungainly, fast-growing, long-legged lad, clad in the garb of the
frontier. This consisted of a shirt of linsey-woolsey, a coarse
homespun material made of linen and wool, a pair of home-made
moccasins, deerskin leggings or breeches, and a hunting shirt of the
same material. This costume was completed by a coonskin cap, the tail
of the animal being left to hang down the wearer's back as an ornament.
This sturdy lad, who was born to a life of unremitting toil, was
already doing a man's work. From the time he was four years old, away
back on the Kentucky farm, he had contributed his share to the family
labors. Picking berries, dropping seeds, and doing other simple tasks
suited to his strength, he had thus early begun his apprenticeship to
toil. In putting up the "half-faced" camp, he was his father's
principal helper. Afterward, when they built a more, substantial cabin
to take the place of the camp, he learned to handle an ax, a maul, and
a wedge. He helped to fell trees, fashion logs, split rails, and do
other important work in building the one-roomed cabin, which was to be
the permanent home of the family. He assisted also in making the rough
tables and chairs and the one rude bedstead or bed frame which
constituted the principal furniture of the cabin. In his childhood
Abraham did not enjoy the luxury of sleeping on a bedstead. His bed was
simply a heap of dry leaves, which occupied a corner of the loft over
the cabin. He climbed to it every night by a stepladder, or rather a
number of pegs driven into the wall.
Rough and poor and full of hardship as his life was, Lincoln was by no
means a sad or unhappy boy. On the contrary, he was full of fun and
boyish pranks. His life in the open air, the vigorous exercise of every
muscle which necessity forced upon him, the tonic of the forests which
he breathed from his infancy, his interest in every living and growing
thing about him,--all helped to make him unusually strong, healthy,
buoyant, and rich in animal spirits.
The first great sorrow of his life came to him in the death of his
dearly loved mother in 1818. The boy mourned for her as few children
mourn even for the most loving parent. Day after day he went from the
home made desolate by her death to weep on her grave under the near-by
trees.
There were no churches in the Indiana wilderness, and the visits of
wandering ministers of religion to the scattered settlements were few
and far between. Little Abraham was grieved that no funeral service had
been held over his dead mother. He felt that it was in some sense a
lack of respect to her. He thought a great deal about the matter, and
finally wrote a letter to a minister named Elkins, whom the family had
known in Kentucky. Several months after the receipt of the letter
Parson Elkins came to Indiana. On the Sabbath morning after his
arrival, in the presence of friends who had come long distances to
assist, he read the funeral service over the grave of Mrs. Lincoln. He
also spoke in touching words of the tender Christian mother who lay
buried there. This simple service greatly comforted the heart of the
lonely boy.
Some time after Thomas Lincoln brought a new mother to his children
from Kentucky. This was Mrs. Sally Bush Johnston, a young widow, who
had been a girlhood friend of Nancy Hanks. She had three
children,--John, Sarah, and Matilda Johnston,--who accompanied her to
Indiana. The second Mrs. Lincoln brought a stock of household goods and
furniture with her from Kentucky, and with the help of these made so
many improvements in the rude log cabin that her stepchildren regarded
her as a sort of magician or wonder worker. She was a good mother to
them, intelligent, kind, and loving.
He was ten years old at this time, and had been to school but little.
Indeed, he says himself that he only went to school "by littles," and
that all his schooling "did not amount to more than a year." But he had
learned to read when he was a mere baby at his mother's knee; and to a
boy who loved knowledge as he did, this furnished the key to a broad
education. His love of reading amounted to a passion. The books he had
access to when a boy were very few; but they were good ones, and he
knew them literally from cover to cover. They were the Bible, "Robinson
Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," a "History of the United States," and
Weems's "Life of Washington." Some of these were borrowed, among them
the "Life of Washington," of which Abraham afterward became the happy
owner. The story of how he became its owner has often been told.
The book had been loaned to him by a neighbor, a well-to-do farmer
named Crawford. After reading from it late into the night by the light
of pine knots, Abraham carried it to his bedroom in the loft. He placed
it in a crack between the logs over his bed of dry leaves, so that he
could reach to it as soon as the first streaks of dawn penetrated
through the chinks in the log cabin. Unfortunately, it rained heavily
during the night, and when he took down the precious volume in the
morning, he found it badly damaged, all soddened and stained by the
rain. He was much distressed, and hurried to the owner of the book as
soon as possible to explain the mishap.
"I'm real sorry, Mr. Crawford," he said, in concluding his explanation,
"and want to fix it up with you somehow, if you can tell me any way,
for I ain't got the money to pay for it with."
"Well," said Mr. Crawford, "being as it's you, Abe, I won't be hard on
you. Come over and shuck corn three days, and the book's yours."
The boy was delighted with the result of what at first had seemed a
great misfortune. Verily, his sorrow was turned into joy. What! Shuck
corn only three days and become owner of the book that told all about
his greatest hero! What an unexpected piece of good fortune!
Lincoln's reading had revealed to him a world beyond his home in the
wilderness. Slowly it dawned upon him that one day he might find his
place in that great world, and he resolved to prepare himself with all
his might for whatever the future might hold.
"I don't intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like
always," he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading the "Life
of Washington." "I'm going to fit myself for a profession."
"Why, what do you want to be now?" asked Mrs. Crawford, in surprise.
"Oh, I'll be president," said the boy, with a smile.
"You'd make a pretty president, with all your tricks and jokes, now
wouldn't you?" said Mrs. Crawford.
"Oh, I'll study and get ready," was the reply, "and then maybe the
chance will come."
If the life of George Washington, who had all the advantages of culture
and training that his time afforded, was an inspiration to Lincoln, the
poor hard-working backwoods boy, what should the life of Lincoln be to
boys of to-day? Here is a further glimpse of the way in which he
prepared himself to be president of the United States. The quotation is
from Ida M. Tarbell's "Life of Lincoln."
"Every lull in his daily labor he used for reading, rarely going to his
work without a book. When plowing or cultivating the rough fields of
Spencer County, he found frequently a half hour for reading, for at the
end of every long row the horse was allowed to rest, and Lincoln had
his book out and was perched on stump or fence, almost as soon as the
plow had come to a standstill. One of the few people left in
Gentryville who still remembers Lincoln, Captain John Lamar, tells to
this day of riding to mill with his father, and seeing, as they drove
along, a boy sitting on the top rail of an old-fashioned,
stake-and-rider worm fence, reading so intently that he did not notice
their approach. His father, turning to him, said: 'John, look at that
boy yonder, and mark my words, he will make a smart man out of himself.
I may not see it, but you'll see if my words don't come true.' 'That
boy was Abraham Lincoln,' adds Mr. Lamar, impressively."
Lincoln's father was illiterate, and had no sympathy with his son's
efforts to educate himself. Fortunately for him, however, his
stepmother helped and encouraged him in every way possible. Shortly
before her death she said to a biographer of Lincoln: "I induced my
husband to permit Abe to read and study at home, as well as at school.
At first he was not easily reconciled to it, but finally he too seemed
willing to encourage him to a certain extent. Abe was a dutiful son to
me always, and we took particular care when he was reading not to
disturb him,--would let him read on and on till he quit of his own
accord."
Lincoln fully appreciated his stepmother's sympathy and love for him,
and returned them in equal measure. It added greatly to his enjoyment
of his reading and studies to have some one to whom he could talk about
them, and in after life he always gratefully remembered what his second
mother did for him in those early days of toil and effort.
If there was a book to be borrowed anywhere in his neighborhood, he was
sure to hear about it and borrow it if possible. He said himself that
he "read through every book he had ever heard of in that county for a
circuit of fifty miles."
And how he read! Boys who have books and magazines and papers in
abundance in their homes, besides having thousands of volumes to choose
from in great city libraries, can have no idea of what a book meant to
this boy in the wilderness. He devoured every one that came into his
hands as a man famishing from hunger devours a crust of bread. He read
and re-read it until he had made the contents his own.
"From everything he read," says Miss Tarbell, "he made long extracts,
with his turkey-buzzard pen and brier-root ink. When he had no paper he
would write on a board, and thus preserve his selections until he
secured a copybook. The wooden fire shovel was his usual slate, and on
its back he ciphered with a charred stick, shaving it off when it had
become too grimy for use. The logs and boards in his vicinity he
covered with his figures and quotations. By night he read and worked as
long as there was light, and he kept a book in the crack of the logs in
his loft to have it at hand at peep of day. When acting as ferryman on
the Ohio in his nineteenth year, anxious, no doubt, to get through the
books of the house where he boarded before he left the place, he read
every night until midnight."
His stepmother said: "He read everything he could lay his hands on, and
when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down
on boards if he had no paper, and keep it by him until he could get
paper. Then he would copy it, look at it, commit it to memory, and
repeat it."
His thoroughness in mastering everything he undertook to study was a
habit acquired in childhood. How he acquired this habit he tells
himself. "Among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere
child," he says, "I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in
a way I could not understand. I do not think I ever got angry at
anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper, and has
ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing
the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small
part of the night walking up and down and trying to make out what was
the exact meaning of some of their--to me--dark sayings.
"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for
an idea until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was
not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over; until I had put it
in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to
comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me;
for I am never easy now when I am handling a thought, till I have
bounded it north and bounded it south and bounded it east and bounded
it west."
With all his hard study, reading, and thinking, Lincoln was not a
bookworm, nor a dull companion to the humble, unschooled people among
whom his youth was spent. On the contrary, although he was looked up to
as one whose acquirements in "book learning" had raised him far above
every one in his neighborhood, he was the most popular youth in all the
country round. No "husking bee," or "house raising" or merry-making of
any kind was complete if Abraham was not present. He was witty, ready
of speech, a good story-teller, and had stored his memory with a fund
of humorous anecdotes, which he always used to good purpose and with
great effect. He had committed to memory, and could recite all the
poetry in the various school readers used at that time in the log-cabin
schoolhouse. He could make rhymes himself, and even make impromptu
speeches that excited the admiration of his hearers. He was the best
wrestler, jumper, runner, and the strongest of all his young
companions. Even when a mere youth he could lift as much as three
full-grown men; and, "if you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin',"
said his cousin, Dennis Hanks, "you would say there was three men at
work by the way the trees fell. His ax would flash and bite into a
sugar tree or sycamore, and down it would come."
His kindness and tenderness of heart were as great as his strength and
agility. He loved all God's creatures, and cruelty to any of them
always aroused his indignation. Only once did he ever attempt to kill
any of the game in the woods, which the family considered necessary for
their subsistence. He refers to this occasion in an autobiography,
written by him in the third person, in the year 1860.
"A few days before the completion of his eighth year," he says, "in the
absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log
cabin; and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a
crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on
any larger game."
Any suffering thing, whether it was animal, man, woman, or child, was
sure of his sympathy and aid. Although he never touched intoxicating
drinks himself, he pitied those who lost manhood by their use. One
night on his way home from a husking bee or house raising, he found an
unfortunate man lying on the roadside overcome with drink. If the man
were allowed to remain there, he would freeze to death. Lincoln raised
him from the ground and carried him a long distance to the nearest
house, where he remained with him during the night. The man was his
firm friend ever after.
Women admired him for his courtesy and rough gallantry, as well as for
his strength and kindness of heart; and he, in his turn, reverenced
women, as every noble, strong man does. This big, bony, tall, awkward
young fellow, who at eighteen measured six feet four, was as ready to
care for a baby in the absence of its mother as he was to tell a good
story or to fell a tree. Was it any wonder that he was popular with all
kinds of people?
His stepmother says of him: "Abe was a good boy, and I can say what
scarcely one woman--a mother--can say in a thousand; Abe never gave me
a cross word or look, and never refused in fact or appearance to do
anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life.
His mind and mine--what little I had--seemed to run together. He was
here after he was elected president. He was a dutiful son to me always.
I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe.
Both were good boys; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was
the best boy I ever saw or expect to see."
Wherever he went, or whatever he did, he studied men and things, and
gathered knowledge as much by observation as from books and whatever
news-papers or other publications he could get hold of. He used to go
regularly to the leading store in Gentryville, to read a Louisville
paper, taken by the proprietor of the store, Mr. Jones. He discussed
its contents, and exchanged views with the farmers who made the store
their place of meeting. His love of oratory was great. When the courts
were in session in Boonville, a town fifteen miles distant from his
home, whenever he could spare a day, he used to walk there in the
morning and back at night, to hear the lawyers argue cases and make
speeches. By this time Abraham himself could make an impromptu speech
on any subject with which he was at all familiar, good enough to win
the applause of the Indiana farmers.
So, his boyhood days, rough, hard-working days, but not devoid of fun
and recreation, passed. Abraham did not love work any more than other
country boys of his age, but he never shirked his tasks. Whether it was
plowing, splitting rails, felling trees, doing chores, reaping,
threshing, or any of the multitude of things to be done on a farm, the
work was always well done. Sometimes, to make a diversion, when he was
working as a "hired hand," he would stop to tell some of his funny
stories, or to make a stump speech before his fellow-workers, who would
all crowd round him to listen; but he would more than make up for the
time thus spent by the increased energy with which he afterward worked.
Doubtless the other laborers, too, were refreshed and stimulated to
greater effort by the recreation he afforded them and the inspiration
of his example.
Thomas Lincoln had learned carpentry and cabinet making in his youth,
and taught the rudiments of these trades to his son; so that in
addition to his skill and efficiency in all the work that falls to the
lot of a pioneer backwoods farmer, Abraham added the accomplishment of
being a fairly good carpenter. He worked at these trades with his
father whenever the opportunity offered. When he was not working for
his family, he was hired out to the neighboring farmers. His highest
wage was twenty-five cents a day, which he always handed over to his
father.
Lincoln got his first glimpse of the world beyond Indiana when he
worked for several months as a ferryman and boatman on the Ohio River,
at Anderson Creek. He saw the steamers and vessels of all kinds sailing
up and down the Ohio, laden with produce and merchandise, on their way
to and from western and southern towns. He came in contact with
different kinds of people from different states, and thus his views of
the world and its people became a little more extended, and his longing
to be somebody and to do something worth while in the world waxed
stronger daily.
His work as a ferryman showed him that there were other ways of making
a little money than by hiring out to the neighbors at twenty-five cents
a day. He resolved to take some of the farm produce to New Orleans and
sell it there. This project led to the unexpected earning of a dollar,
which added strength to his purpose to prepare himself to take the part
of a man in the world outside of Indiana. Let him tell in his own
words, as he related the story to Mr. Seward years afterward, how he
earned the dollar:--
"Seward," he said, "did you ever hear how I earned my first dollar?"
"No," said Mr. Seward.
"Well," replied he, "I was about eighteen years of age, and belonged,
as you know, to what they call down south the 'scrubs'; people who do
not own land and slaves are nobodies there; but we had succeeded in
raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to
justify me in taking it down the river to sell. After much persuasion I
had got the consent of my mother to go, and had constructed a flatboat
large enough to take the few barrels of things we had gathered to New
Orleans. A steamer was going down the river. We have, you know, no
wharves on the western streams, and the custom was, if passengers were
at any of the landings, they were to go out in a boat, the steamer
stopping and taking them on board. I was contemplating my new boat, and
wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any part,
when two men with trunks came down to the shore in carriages, and
looking at the different boats singled out mine, and asked, 'Who owns
this?' I answered modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of them, 'take
us and our trunks to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was very glad
to have the chance of earning something, and supposed that each of them
would give me a couple of bits. The trunks were put in my boat, the
passengers seated themselves on them, and I sculled them out to the
steamer. They got on board, and I lifted the trunks and put them on the
deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out,
'You have forgotten to pay me.' Each of them took from his pocket a
silver half-dollar and threw it on the bottom of my boat. I could
scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. You may think it was
a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle,
but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely
credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day;
that by honest work I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and
thoughtful boy from that time."
In March, 1828, Lincoln was employed by one of the leading men of
Gentryville to take a load of produce down the Mississippi River to New
Orleans. For this service he was paid eight dollars a month and his
rations.
This visit to New Orleans was a great event in his life. It showed him
the life of a busy cosmopolitan city, which was a perfect wonderland to
him. Everything he saw aroused his astonishment and interest, and
served to educate him for the larger life on which he was to enter
later.
The next important event in the history of the Lincoln family was their
removal from Indiana to Illinois in 1830. The farm in Indiana had not
prospered as they hoped it would,--hence the removal to new ground in
Illinois. Abraham drove the team of oxen which carried their household
goods from the old home to their new abiding place near Decatur, in
Macon County, Illinois. Driving over the muddy, ill-made roads with a
heavily laden team was hard and slow work, and the journey occupied a
fortnight. When they arrived at their destination, Lincoln again helped
to build a log cabin for the family home. With his stepbrother he also,
as he said himself, "made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of
ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year."
In that same year, 1830, he reached his majority. It was time for him
to be about his own business. He had worked patiently and cheerfully
since he was able to hold an ax in his hands for his own and the
family's maintenance. They could now get along without him, and he felt
that the time had come for him to develop himself for larger duties.
He left the log cabin, penniless, without even a good suit of clothes.
The first work he did when he became his own master was to supply this
latter deficiency. For a certain Mrs. Millet he "split four hundred
rails for every yard of brown jeans, dyed with white walnut bark,
necessary to make a pair of trousers."
For nearly a year he continued to work as a rail splitter and farm
"hand." Then he was hired by a Mr. Denton Offut to take a flatboat
loaded with goods from Sangamon town to New Orleans. So well pleased
was Mr. Offut with the way in which Lincoln executed his commission
that on his return he engaged him to take charge of a mill and store at
New Salem.
There, as in every other place in which he had resided, he became the
popular favorite. His kindness of heart, his good humor, his skill as a
story teller, his strength, his courtesy, manliness, and honesty were
such as to win all hearts. He would allow no man to use profane
language before women. A boorish fellow who insisted on doing so in the
store on one occasion, in spite of Lincoln's protests, found this out
to his cost. Lincoln had politely requested him not to use such
language before ladies, but the man persisted in doing so. When the
women left the store, he became violently angry and began to abuse
Lincoln. He wanted to pick a quarrel with him. Seeing this Lincoln
said, "Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I may as well whip you
as any other man," and taking the man out of the store he gave him a
well-merited chastisement. Strange to say, he became Lincoln's friend
after this, and remained so to the end of his life.
His scrupulous honesty won for him in the New Salem community the title
of "Honest Abe," a title which is still affectionately applied to him.
On one occasion, having by mistake overcharged a customer six and a
quarter cents, he walked three miles after the store was closed in
order to restore the customer's money. At another time, in weighing tea
for a woman, he used a quarter-pound instead of a half-pound weight.
When he went to use the scales again, he discovered his mistake, and
promptly walked a long distance to deliver the remainder of the tea.
Lincoln's determination to improve himself continued to be the leading
object of his life. He said once to his fellow-clerk in the store, "I
have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from
others." His observation had taught him that the great difference in
men's positions was not due so much to one having more talents or being
more highly gifted than another, but rather to the way in which one
cultivated his talent or talents and another neglected his.
Up to this time he had not made a study of grammar, but he realized
that if he were to speak in public he must learn to speak
grammatically. He had no grammar, and did not know where to get one. In
this dilemma he consulted the schoolmaster of New Salem, who told him
where and from whom he could borrow a copy of Kirkham's Grammar. The
place named was six miles from New Salem. But that was nothing to a
youth so hungry for an education as Lincoln. He immediately started for
the residence of the fortunate people who owned a copy of Kirkham's
Grammar. The book was loaned to him without hesitation. In a short time
its contents were mastered, the student studying at night by the light
of shavings burned in the village cooper's shop. "Well," said Lincoln
to Greene, his fellow-clerk, when he had turned over the last page of
the grammar, "if that's what they call a science, I think I'll go at
another." The conquering of one thing after another, the thorough
mastery of whatever he undertook to do, made the next thing easier of
accomplishment than it would otherwise have been. In order to practice
debating he used to walk seven or eight miles to debating clubs. No
labor or trouble seemed too great to him if by it he could increase his
knowledge or add to his acquirements. No matter how hard or exhausting
his work, whether it was rail splitting, plowing, lumbering, boating,
or store keeping, he studied and read every spare minute, and often
until late at night.
But this sketch has already exceeded the limits of Lincoln's boyhood,
for he had reached his twenty-second year while in the store in New
Salem. How he was made captain of a company raised to fight against the
Indians, how he kept store for himself, learned surveying, was elected
a member of the Illinois legislature, studied law, and was admitted to
the bar in Springfield, and how he finally became president of the
United States,--all this belongs to a later chapter of his life.
Lincoln's rise from the poorest of log cabins to the White House, to be
president of the greatest republic in the world, is one of the most
inspiring stories in American biography. Yet he was not a genius,
unless a determination to make the most of one's self and to persist in
spite of all hardships, discouragements, and hindrances, be genius. He
made himself what he was--one of the noblest, greatest, and best of
men--by sheer dint of hard work and the cultivation of the talents that
had been given him. No fortunate chances, no influential friends, no
rare opportunities played a part in his life. Alone and unaided he
made, by the grace of God, the great career which will forever
challenge the admiration of mankind.