cipher certainly from no love of mathematics, but because it might
come in play in some more congenial business than the farm-work which
bounded the horizon of his contemporaries. Had it not been for that
interior spur which kept his clear spirit at its task, his schools
could have done little for him; for, counting his attendance under
Riney and Hazel in Kentucky, and under Dorsey, Crawford, and Swaney in
Indiana, it amounted to less than a year in all. The schools were much
alike. They were held in deserted cabins of round logs, with earthen
floors, and small holes for windows, sometimes illuminated by as much
light as could penetrate through panes of paper greased with lard. The
teachers were usually in keeping with their primitive surroundings.
The profession offered no rewards sufficient to attract men of
education or capacity. After a few months of desultory instruction
young Abraham knew all that these vagrant literati could teach him.
His last school-days were passed with one Swaney in 1826, who taught
at a distance of four and a half miles from the Lincoln cabin. The
nine miles of walking doubtless seemed to Thomas Lincoln a waste of
time, and the lad was put at steady work and saw no more of school.

But it is questionable whether he lost anything by being deprived of
the ministrations of the backwoods dominies. When his tasks ended, his
studies became the chief pleasure of his life. In all the intervals of
his work--in which he never took delight, knowing well enough that he
was born for something better than that--he read, wrote, and ciphered
incessantly. His reading was naturally limited by his opportunities,
for books were among the rarest of luxuries in that region and time.
But he read everything he could lay his hands upon, and he was
certainly fortunate in the few books of which he became the possessor.
It would hardly be possible to select a better handful of classics for
a youth in his circumstances than the few volumes he turned with a