ll."

"If it be possible, I will secure it," said Lincoln.

He made a long walk and purchased the book, and so made a
grammar-school, a class of one, of his leisure moments in Orfutt's
store.

While he thus was studying grammar, the men whom he thirty or more years
afterward made Cabinet ministers, generals, and diplomats were enjoying
the easy experiences of schools, military academies, and colleges. Not
one of them ever dreamed of such an experience of soul-building and
mind-building as this; and some of them, had they met him then, would
have felt that they could not have invited him to their homes. Orfutt's
store and that one grammar were not the elms of Yale, or the campus of
Harvard, or the great libraries or bowery streets of English Oxford or
Cambridge. Yet here grew and developed a soul which was to tower above
the age, and hold hands with the master spirits not only of the time but
the ages.

Years passed, and one day that sad-faced boy, who was always seeking to
make others cheerful amid the clouds of his own gloom, stood before a
grim council of war. He had determined to call into the field of arms
five hundred thousand men.

"If you do that thing," said a leader of the council, "you can not
expect to be elected again President of the United States."

The dark form rose to the height of a giant and poured forth his soul,
and he said:

"It is not necessary for me to be re-elected President of the United
States, but it is necessary for the soldiers at the front to be
re-enforced by five hundred thousand men, and I shall call for them; and
if I go down under the act, I will go down like the Cumberland, with my
colors flying."

It required a high school of experience to train a soul to an utterance
like that; and that fateful declaration began in those moral syllables
that defended the rights of the animals of the woods, that said "No" to
a horse-race, that refused from the first to accept an unjust case at
law, and that from the first declared that right is might.

CHAPTER XVII.

THOMAS LINCOLN MOVES.

Jasper taught school for a time in Boonesville, Indiana, and preached in
the new settlements along the Wabash. While at Boonesville, he chanced
to meet young Lincoln at the court house, under circumstances that
filled his heart with pity.

It was at a trial for murder that greatly excited the people. The lawyer
for the defense was John Breckinridge, a man of great reputation and
ability.