To her he offered himself again, alleging reformed habits and an improved worldly condition. On these representations she took him, and soon after Abraham and his sister saw their cabin approached by the most prosperous woman who had ever entered their lives. In the wagon which carried her goods were furniture, cooking utensils, and bedding of a magnificence and luxury beyond their experience. Not too much cast down by the contrast between her husband's story and his cabin, she took both him and it in hand. She forced him to put in doors and floors, and perhaps windows, which consisted of greased paper over a hole, and she taught the children some of the order and habits of civilization.

Abraham, now aged ten, was a queer, homely boy, with irregular face, coarse features, protruding ears, strong limbs, and an ambitious mind. If he had been to school in Kentucky, it was nothing to count; and although he was now eager to learn, and had the opportunity occasionally, when work was slack, to take advantage of some institution which kept open when there happened to be a floating schoolmaster, he later estimated that his entire schooling put together would add up to about one year. The wandering gentlemen who furnished the instruction needed to know something about the three R's and a good deal about the physical domination of rough boys.

The first Indiana school attended by the little Lincoln was kept by Hazel Dorsey, and stood a mile and a half from his father's cabin. It was made of logs, high enough for a man to stand erect under the loft. The floor was of split logs, the chimney of poles and clay, the windows of the usual greased paper pasted on pieces of split board which covered an aperture made by cutting out parts of two logs. Abraham is supposed not to have been quick, but to have stood high through his industry and keen interest. Although the boy was so useful with his axe that he was often taken from school, even when it existed, to work at home, or be hired out to others, he got partly even by studying on Sundays or on the way to and from work, perhaps even when he was driving the team or doing other industrial chores and learning the rudiments of his father's trade.

At fourteen he received another taste of instruction under the guidance of one Andrew Crawford, and the progress in his nature and knowledge is shown by the fact that at this period he sat with a schoolmate, Amy Roby, on the bank of the river, and, while both dangled their feet in the water, explained to his girl companion that the motion of the moon, which seemed to be rising above the neighboring hills, was only illusion. By this time he probably knew a good deal, for he was going weekly to Gentryville to

read the Louisville newspaper, and the few books which existed in the neighborhood he learned thoroughly. The Bible was at hand, and he read it, but, his stepmother says, " he sought more congenial books." These more congenial volumes included Æsop's "Fables," which probably confirmed his inherited tendency to speak in parables; "Robinson Crusoe"; "The Pilgrim's Progress," which was no more successful than the Bible in bringing out religion; a history of the United States; and Weems's "Life of Washington," to which he used to refer many years later. At this ripe age of fourteen he would write and cipher with chalk on the cabin walls, or on the wooden shovel, which he could whittle clean again, reserving the scarce allowance of paper for copying extracts from borrowed books. Returning from work, he would go to the cupboard, take a piece of corn bread, and sit down to read.

At seventeen he saw his last school days, with one Swaney, four and one-half miles from the cabin, and his progress may be guessed from the tale that he used to deliver discourses against cruelty to animals, in favor of temperance, and against the horrors of war. These views go harmoniously with the story that when he found the town drunkard freezing by the roadside he saved his life by carrying him in his arms to the

cabin. In the meantime he continued his own education, taking one step forward by studying the Revised Statutes of Indiana, which he borrowed from the town constable. Of course his father took no joy in these reachings out of his ungainly son, but the new wife was mistress in her home, and she protected Abraham against the interference of Tom, helping the boy to school days and to a quiet corner for study at home. They were friends and confidants, and the stepson's gratitude never ceased. "Education defective" is his complete description of his early life given to the compiler of the Dictionary of Congress, and he hated to speak of it, but much of what light the surrounding obstacles admitted was thankfully credited to his stepmother.

Amid conflicting impressions it seems probable that Abraham, although a strong and effective workman, had no exorbitant love of the axe for its own sake. He enjoyed mounting the stump to make a speech, for which he soon earned local fame, or repeating on Monday the sermon of the Sabbath, or reading texts and delivering discourses to the younger children in the cabin when his parents went alone to hear a preacher. All this was intellectual and unprofitable, and Tom didn't like it. Says the relative Dennis Hanks: "I never could tell whether Abe loved

his father very well or not. I don't think he did, for Abe was one of those forward boys. I have seen his father knock him down off the fence when a stranger would ask the way to a neighbor's house. Abe would always have the first word. The old man loved his children." The same facts seem to shine through the statement that Tom's rage grew out of his son's fondness for drawing passers-by into long conversations. The neighbor John Romine says: "Abe was awful lazy. He worked for me; He worked for me; was always reading and thinking; used to get mad at him. He worked for me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy: he would laugh and talk and crack jokes all the time; didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay. . . . Lincoln said to me one day, that his father taught him to work, but never learned him to love it.”

His preference for thought, conversation, and observation, working amid difficult surroundings and dealing with things as he found them in a wilderness, did not create spontaneously and at once the style of the Gettysburg address, or of his most profoundly humorous remarks. Much of his early effort was florid, much was coarse, but most of it was vital. Some idea of the form taken by his early love of poetry and humor may be gleaned from these verses by him, written in a book of his own manufacture: —