Abraham Lincoln - the Sixteenth President - the Great Emancipator

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THE SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT.

THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR.

Did you ever read a fairy story about a poor boy who became a prince? If you would like I can tell you as good a story as that a true story about a poor boy who became presidentÐ'--and that is better than being a prince. The boy I am going to speak about was as poor as any one that ever lived in America: but he rose to a grander position than any prince or king ever reached. Listen to the story of his life. There was once a very poor man who lived in a miserable little log cabin in the wild part of what was then called "away out West." It was on a stony, weedy hillside, at a place called Nolin's Creek, in the State of Kentucky. In that log cabin, on the twelfth day of February, in the year 1809, a little baby was born. He was named Abraham Lincoln.

I don't believe you ever saw a much poorer or meaner place in which to be born and brought up than that little log cabin. Abraham Lincoln's father was ignorant and lazy. He could not read and he hated to work. Their house had no windows, it had no floor, it had none of the things you have in your pleasant homes. In all America no baby was ever born with fewer comforts and poorer surroundings than little Abraham Lincoln. He grew from a baby to a homely little boy, and to a homelier young man. His clothes never fitted him; he never, in all his life, went to school but one year; he had to work hard, he could play but little, and many a day he knew what it was to be cold and hungry and almost homeless. But with all this he had that in him which makes a man great.

His father kept moving about from place to place, living almost always in the wild regions. He went from Kentucky to Indiana and then to Illinois. Sometimes their home would be a log cabin, sometimes it was just a hut with only three sides boarded up. Abraham Lincoln was a neglected and forlorn little fellow. His mother died when he was only eight years old. Then Abraham and his sister Sarah were worse off than ever. But pretty soon his father married a second wife, and Abraham's new mother was a good and wise woman, which was a very good thing for the boy.

She took care of him and gave him new clothes; she taught him how to make the most and do the best with the few things he had and the chances that came to him: she made him wish for better things; she helped him fix himself up, and encouraged him to read and study.

This last was what Abraham liked most of all, and he was reading and studying all the time. There were not many books where he lived, but he borrowed all he could lay his hands on, and read them over and over. He studied all the hard things he could find books about, from arithmetic and grammar to surveying and law. He wrote on a shingle, when he could not get paper, and by the light of a log fire, when he could not get candles. He worked out questions in arithmetic on the back of a wooden shovel, and when it was full of figures he scraped them off and began again. He read and studied in the fields, when he was not working on woodpiles, when he was chopping wood; or in the kitchen, rocking the cradle of any baby whose father or mother had a book to lend him. His favorite position for studying was to be

stretched out like the long boy he was, on an old chair, in front of an open fire. Here he would read and write and cipher, after the day's work was over, until at last he grew to

be one of the best scholars of all the boys round. You may see from this what hard study will do, even without teachers.

Once he borrowed a book of an old farmer. It was a "Life of Washington." He read it and read it again, and when he was not reading it he put it safely away between the logs that made the wall of his log-cabin home. But one day there came a hard storm; it beat against the cabin and soaked in between the logs and spoiled the book. Young Abraham did not try to hide the book nor get out of the trouble. He never did a mean thing of that sort. He took the soaked and ruined book to the old farmer, told him how it happened, and asked how he could pay for it.

"Wall," said the old farmer, "'t'aint much account to me now. You pull fodder for three days and the book is yours."

So the boy set to work, and for three days "pulled fodder " to feed the farmer's cattle.

He dried and smoothed and pressed out the "Life of Washington," for it was his now. And that is the way he bought his first book.

He was the strongest boy in all the country around. He could mow the most, plow the deepest, split wood the best, toss the farthest, run the swiftest, jump the highest and wrestle the best of any boy or man in the neighborhood. But though he was so strong, he was always so kind, so gentle, so obliging, so just and so helpful that everybody liked him, few dared to stand up against him, and all came to him to get work done, settle disputes, or find help in quarrels or trouble.

So he grew amid the woods and farms, to be a bright, willing, obliging, active, good-natured, fun-loving boy. He had to work early and late, and when he was a big boy he hired out to work for the farmers. He could do anything, from splitting rails for fences to rocking the baby's cradle; or from hoeing corn in the field to telling stories in the kitchen.

And how he did like to tell funny stories! Not always funny, either. For, you see, he had read so much and remembered things so well that he could tell stories to make people laugh and stories to make people think. He liked to recite poetry and "speak pieces," and do all the things that make a person good company for every one. He would sit in front of the country store or on the counter inside and tell of all the funny things he had seen, or heard, or knew. He would make up poetry about the men and women of the neighborhood, or make a speech upon things that the people were interested in, until all the boys and girls, and the men and women too, said "Abe Lincoln," as they called him, knew everything worth knowing, and was an awful smart chap."

He worked on farms, ran a ferryboat across the river, split rails for farm fences, kept store, did all sorts of "odd jobs " for the farmers and their wives, and was, in fact, what we call a regular "Jack of all trades." And all the time, though