On one of the pages of this quaint book he had written these four lines
of schoolboy doggerel:
“Abraham Lincoln,
His Hand and Pen,
He Will be Good,
But God knows when.”
The poetic spirit was strong in the young scholar just then for on
another page of the same book he had written these two verses, which are
supposed to have been original with him:
“Time, what an empty vapor ‘tis,
And days, how swift they are;
Swift as an Indian arrow
Fly on like a shooting star.
The present moment just is here,
Then slides away in haste,
That we can never say they’re ours,
But only say they’re past.”
Another specimen of the poetical, or rhyming ability, is found in the
following couplet, written by him for his friend, Joseph C. Richardson:
“Good boys who to their books apply,
Will all be great men by and by.”
In all, Lincoln’s “schooling” did not amount to a year’s time, but he
was a constant student outside of the schoolhouse. He read all the books
he could borrow, and it was his chief delight during the day to lie
under the shade of some tree, or at night in front of an open fireplace,
reading and studying. His favorite books were the Bible and Aesop’s
fables, which he kept always within reach and read time and again.
The first law book he ever read was “The Statutes of Indiana,” and it
was from this work that he derived his ambition to be a lawyer.