did this from calculating
ambition. It was a native intellectual thirst, the significance of which
he did not himself yet understand. Such exceptional characteristics
manifested themselves only in a few matters. In most particulars he grew
up as the ordinary backwoods boy develops into the youth and man. As he
was subjected to their usual labors, so also he was limited to their
usual pastimes and enjoyments.

The varied amusements common to our day were not within their reach. The
period of the circus, the political speech, and the itinerant show had
not yet come. Schools, as we have seen, and probably meetings or church
services, were irregular, to be had only at long intervals. Primitive
athletic games and commonplace talk, enlivened by frontier jests and
stories, formed the sum of social intercourse when half a dozen or a
score of settlers of various ages came together at a house-raising or
corn-husking, or when mere chance brought them at the same time to the
post-office or the country store. On these occasions, however, Abraham
was, according to his age, always able to contribute his full share or
more. Most of his natural aptitudes equipped him especially to play his
part well. He had quick intelligence, ready sympathy, a cheerful
temperament, a kindling humor, a generous and helpful spirit. He was
both a ready talker and appreciative listener. By virtue of his tall
stature and unusual strength of sinew and muscle, he was from the
beginning a leader in all athletic games; by reason of his studious
habits and his extraordinarily retentive memory he quickly became the
best story-teller among his companions. Even the slight training he
gained from his studies greatly quickened his perceptions and broadened
and steadied the strong reasoning faculty with which nature had endowed
him.

As the years of his youth passed by, his less gifted comrades learned to
accept his judgments and to welcome his power to entertain and instruct
them. On his own part, he gradually learned to write not merely with the
hand, but also with the mind--to think. It was an easy transition for
him from remembering the jingle of a commonplace rhyme to the
constructing of a doggerel verse, and he did not neglect the opportunity
of practising his penmanship in such impromptus. Tradition also relates
that he added to his list of stories and jokes humorous imitations from
the sermons of eccentric preachers. But tradition has very likely both
magni