"Dennis told him that book was most
likely lies, but Abe keeps on reading it. Where is all this book
learning going to get him? More'n I ever had."

"Maybe the Lord meant for young ones to be smarter than their parents,"
said Sarah, "or the world might never get any better."

Tom shook his head in dismay. "Women and their fool notions! If I don't
watch out, you'll be spoiling the boy more'n his own mammy did."

Sarah's cheeks were red as she bent over her knitting. Tom was right
about one thing. There was no school for Abe to go to. But some day
there would be. Every few weeks another clearing was made in the forest,
and the neighbors gathered for a "house raising" to help put up a cabin.
Then smoke would rise from a new chimney, and another new home would be
started in the wilderness.

With so many new settlers, there was usually plenty of work for Abe.
Whenever Tom did not need him at home, he hired out at twenty-five cents
a day. He gave this money to his father. That was the law, Tom said. Not
until Abe was twenty-one would he be allowed to keep his wages for
himself. As a hired boy, he plowed corn, chopped wood, and did all kinds
of chores. He did not like farming, but he managed to have fun.

"Pa taught me to work," Abe told one farmer who had hired him, "but he
never taught me to love it."

The farmer scratched his head. He couldn't understand a boy who was
always reading, and if Abe wasn't reading he was telling jokes. The
farmer thought that Abe was lazy.

"Sometimes," the farmer said, "I get awful mad at you, Abe Lincoln. You
crack your jokes and spin your yarns, if you want to, while the men are
eating their dinner. But don't you keep them from working."

The other farm hands liked to gather around Abe when they stopped to eat
their noon meal. Sometimes he would stand on a tree stump and
"speechify." The men would become so interested that they would be late
getting back to the fields. Other times he would tell them stories that
he had read in books or that he had heard from some traveler who had
passed through Pigeon Creek. He nearly always had a funny story to tell.

[Illustration]

Yet there was "something peculiarsome about Abe," as Dennis Hanks once
said. He would be laughing one minute; the next minute he would look
solemn and sad. He would walk along the narrow forest trails, a faraway
look in his eyes. Someone would say "Howdy, Abe." Then he would grin and
start "cracking jokes" again.

A