been for sickness. The following was to have been my graduating
composition.




ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY

ANNIE L. BURTON


In a little clearing in the backwoods of Harding County, Kentucky,
there stood years ago a rude cabin within whose walls Abraham Lincoln
passed his childhood. An "unaccountable" man he has been called, and
the adjective was well chosen, for who could account for a mind and
nature like Lincoln's with the ancestry he owned? His father was a
thriftless, idle carpenter, scarcely supporting his family, and with
but the poorest living. His mother was an uneducated woman, but must
have been of an entirely different nature, for she was able to impress
upon her boy a love of learning. During her life, his chief, in fact
his only book, was the Bible, and in this he learned to read. Just
before he was nine years old, the father brought his family across the
Ohio River into Illinois, and there in the unfloored log cabin, minus
windows and doors, Abraham lived and grew. It was during this time
that the mother died, and in a short time the shiftless father with
his family drifted back to the old home, and here found another for
his children in one who was a friend of earlier days. This woman was
of a thrifty nature, and her energy made him floor the cabin, hang