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.

By: Orison Swett Marden