Lincoln attained this classic perfection of ordered thought, and with
it, as an inevitable accompaniment this classic beauty of expression,
only by great struggle. He became a poet of the first rank only by
virtue of his moral spirit. He was continually correcting deficiencies
in his character, which were far greater than is generally received,
owing to the tendency of American historians of the tribe of Parson
Weems to find by force illustrations of moral heroism in the youth of
our great men. Thus Lincoln is represented as a noble lad, who, having
allowed a borrowed book to be ruined by rain, went to the owner and
offered to "pull fodder" to repay him, which the man ungenerously
permitted him to do. The truth is, that the neighbor, to whom the book
was a cherished possession, required him to do the work in repayment,
and that Lincoln not only did it grudgingly, but afterwards lampooned
the man so severely in satiric verse that he was ashamed to show himself
at neighborhood gatherings. All the people about Gentryville feared
Lincoln's caustic wit, and disliked him for it, although they were
greatly impressed with his ability exhibited thereby. Lincoln recognized
his moral obliquity, and curbed his propensity for satire, which was a
case of that "exercise of natural faculty" which affects all gifted
persons. And when he left that region he visited all the neighbors, and
asked pardon of those whom he had ridiculed. The true Lincoln is a far
better example to boys than the fictitious one, in that he had more
unlovely traits at first than the average lad, yet he reformed, with the
result that, when he went to new scenes, he speedily became the most
popular young man in the neighborhood. He was one of those who

"rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."

The reformation of his character by self examination and determination
not to make the same mistake again seems to have induced similar
effects and methods for their attainment in the case of his
intellectual development. Whatever the connection, both regenerations
proceeded apace. Lincoln at first was a shallow thinker, accepting
without examination the views of others, especially popular statesmen,
such as Henry Clay, whose magnetic personality was drawing to himself
the high-spirited young men of the West. Some of the political
doctrines which Lincoln then adopted he retained to the end, these
being on