mere boy he had to help in supporting the family, either on his father's
clearing, or hired out to other farmers to plough, or dig ditches, or
chop wood, or drive ox teams; occasionally also to "tend the baby," when
the farmer's wife was otherwise engaged. He could regard it as an
advancement to a higher sphere of activity when he obtained work in a
"crossroads store," where he amused the customers by his talk over the
counter; for he soon distinguished himself among the backwoods folk as
one who had something to say worth listening to. To win that
distinction, he had to draw mainly upon his wits; for, while his thirst
for knowledge was great, his opportunities for satisfying that thirst
were wofully slender.

In the log schoolhouse, which he could visit but little, he was taught
only reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. Among the people of
the settlement, bush farmers and small tradesmen, he found none of
uncommon intelligence or education; but some of them had a few books,
which he borrowed eagerly. Thus he read and reread, AEsop's Fables,
learning to tell stories with a point and to argue by parables; he read
Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, a short history of the United
States, and Weems's Life of Washington. To the town constable's he went
to read the Revised Statutes of Indiana. Every printed page that fell
into his hands he would greedily devour, and his family and friends
watched him with wonder, as the uncouth boy, after his daily work,
crouched in a corner of the log cabin or outside under a tree, absorbed
in a book while munching his supper of corn bread. In this manner he
began to gather some knowledge, and sometimes he would astonish the girls
with such startling remarks as that the earth was moving around the sun,
and not the sun around the earth, and they marvelled where "Abe" could
have got such queer notions. Soon he also felt the impulse to write; not
only making extracts from books he wished to remember, but also composing