At the beginning of the twentieth century there is, strictly speaking,
no frontier to the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the larger part of the country was frontier. In any portion of
the country to-day, in the remotest villages and hamlets, on the
enormous farms of the Dakotas or the vast ranches of California, one is
certain to find some, if not many, of the modern appliances of
civilization such as were not dreamed of one hundred years ago. Aladdin
himself could not have commanded the glowing terms to write the
prospectus of the closing years of the nineteenth century. So, too, it
requires an extraordinary effort of the imagination to conceive of the
condition of things in the opening years of that century.

The first quarter of the century closed with the year 1825. At that
date Lincoln was nearly seventeen years old. The deepest impressions of
life are apt to be received very early, and it is certain that the
influences which are felt previous to seventeen years of age have much
to do with the formation of the character. If, then, we go back to the
period named, we can tell with sufficient accuracy what were the
circumstances of Lincoln's early life. Though we cannot precisely tell
what he had, we can confidently name many things, things which in this
day we class as the necessities of life, which he had to do without,
for the simple reason that they had not then been invented or
discovered.

In the first place, we must bear in mind that he lived in the woods.
The West of that day was not wild in the sense of being wicked,
criminal, ruffian. Morally, and possibly intellectually, the people of
that region would compare with the rest of the country of that day or