great earnestness. He took it to bed with him in the loft and read till
his 'nubbin' of candle burned out. Then he placed the book between the
logs of the cabin, that it might be near as soon as it was light enough
in the morning to read. In the night a heavy rain came up and he awoke
to find his book wet through and through. Drying it as well as he could,
he went to Crawford and told him of the mishap. As he had no money to
pay for the injured book, he offered to work out the value of it.
Crawford fixed the price at three days' work, and the future President
pulled corn for three days, thus becoming owner of the coveted volume."
In addition to this, he was fortunate enough to get hold of Æsop's
Fables, Pilgrim's Progress, and the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry
Clay. He made these books his own by conning them over and over, copying
the more impressive portions until they were firmly fixed in his memory.
Commenting upon the value of this sort of mental training, Dr. Holland
wisely remarks: "Those who have witnessed the dissipating effect of many
books upon the minds of modern children do not find it hard to believe
that Abraham Lincoln's poverty of books was the wealth of his life. The
few he had did much to perfect the teaching which his mother had begun,
and to form a character which for quaint simplicity, earnestness,
truthfulness, and purity, has never been surpassed among the historic
personages of the world."

It may well have been that Lincoln's lack of books and the means of
learning threw him upon his own resources and led him into those modes
of thought, of quaint and apt and logical reasoning, so
peculiar to him. At any rate, it is certain that books can no more make
a character like Lincoln than they can make a poet like Shakespeare.

"By books may Learning sometimes befall,
But Wisdom never by books at all,"--