th very unusual purpose and
determination not only to understand them at the moment, but to fix them
firmly in his mind. His early companions all agree that he employed
every spare moment in keeping on with some one of his studies. His
stepmother tells us that "When he came across a passage that struck him,
he would write it down on boards if he had no paper, and keep it there
until he did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it.
He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all
things, and thus preserved them." He spent long evenings doing sums on
the fire-shovel. Iron fire-shovels were a rarity among pioneers. Instead
they used a broad, thin clapboard with one end narrowed to a handle,
arranging with this the piles of coals upon the hearth, over which they
set their "skillet" and "oven" to do their cooking. It was on such a
wooden shovel that Abraham worked his sums by the flickering firelight,
making his figures with a piece of charcoal, and, when the shovel was
all covered, taking a drawing-knife and shaving it off clean again.

The hours that he was able to devote to his penmanship, his reading, and
his arithmetic were by no means many; for, save for the short time that
he was actually in school, he was, during all these years, laboring hard
on his father's farm, or hiring his youthful strength to neighbors who
had need of help in the work of field or forest. In pursuit of his
knowledge he was on an up-hill path; yet in spite of all obstacles he
worked his way to so much of an education as placed him far ahead of his
schoolmates and quickly abreast of his various teachers. He borrowed
every book in the neighborhood. The list is a short one: "Robinson
Crusoe," "Aesop's Fables," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Weems's "Life
of Washington," and a "History of the United States." When everything
else had been read, he resolutely began on the "Revised Statutes of
Indiana," which Dave Turnham, the constable, had in daily use, but
permitted him to come to his house and read.

Though so fond of his books, it must not be supposed that he cared only
for work and serious study. He was a social, sunny-tempered lad, as fond
of jokes and fun as he was kindly and industrious. His stepmother said
of him: "I can say, what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say, Abe
never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused . . . to do anything
I asked him . . . I must say . . . that Abe was the best