Dennis Hanks claims to have taught his young cousin to read, write, and
cipher. "He knew his letters pretty wellish, but no more. His mother had
taught him. If ever there was a good woman on earth, she was one,--a
true Christian of the Baptist church. But she died soon after we
arrived, and Abe was left without a teacher. His father couldn't read a
word. The boy had only about one quarter of schooling, hardly that. I
then set in to help him. I didn't know much, but I did the best I could.
Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal or the p'int of a
burnt stick on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country
town, and I made some ink out of blackberry briar-root and a little
copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas ate the paper after a
while. I made Abe's first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We had no
geese them days. After he learned to write his name he was scrawlin' it
everywhere. Sometimes he would write it in the white sand down by the
crick bank and leave it there till the waves would blot it out. He
didn't take to books in the beginnin'. We had to hire him at first, but
after he got a taste on't it was the old story--we had to pull the sow's
ears to get her to the trough, and then pull her tail to get her away.
He read a great deal, and had a wonderful memory--wonderful. Never
forgot anything."

Lincoln's first reading book was Webster's Speller. "When I got him
through that," said Uncle Dennis, "I had only a copy of the Indiana
Statutes. Then Abe got hold of a book. I can't rikkilect the name. It
told a yarn about a feller, a nigger or suthin', that sailed a flatboat
up to a rock, and the rock was magnetized and drawed all the nails out,
and he got a duckin' or drowned or suthin',--I forget now. [It was the
"Arabian Nights."] Abe would lay on the floor with a chair under his
head and laugh over them stories by the hour. I told him they was likely
lies from beginnin' to end, but he learned to read right well in them. I