ge, and set himself
to acquire it. This pursuit soon became a passion, and this deep and
irresistible yearning did more for him perhaps than richer
opportunities would have done. It made him a constant student, and it
taught him the value of fragments of time. "He was always at the head
of his class," writes one of his schoolmates, "and passed us rapidly
in his studies. He lost no time at home, and when he was not at work
was at his books. He kept up his studies on Sunday, and carried his
books with him to work, so that he might read when he rested from
labor." "I induced my husband to permit Abe to read and study at home
as well as at school," writes his stepmother. "At first he was not
easily reconciled to it, but finally he too seemed willing to
encourage him to a certain extent. Abe was a dutiful son to me always,
and we took particular care when he was reading not to disturb
him,--would let him read on and on until he quit of his own accord."

The books within his reach were few, but they were among the best.
First and foremost was that collection of literature in prose and
verse, the Bible: a library of sixty-six volumes, presenting nearly
every literary form, and translated at the fortunate moment when the
English language had received the recent impress of its greatest
masters of the speech of the imagination. This literature Mr. Lincoln
knew intimately, familiarly, fruitfully; as Shakespeare knew it in an
earlier version, and as Tennyson knew it and was deeply influenced by
it in the form in which it entered into and trained Lincoln's
imagination. Then there was that wise and very human text-book of the
knowledge of character and life, "AEsop's Fables"; that masterpiece of
clear presentation, "Robinson Crusoe"; and that classic of pure
English, "The Pilgrim's Progress." These four books--in the hands of a
meditative boy, who read until the last ember went out on the hearth,
began again when the earliest light reached his bed in the loft of the
log cabin, who perched himself on a stump, book in hand, at the end of
every furrow in the plowing season--contained the elements of a
movable university.

To these must be added many volumes borrowed from more fortunate
neighbors; for he had "read through every book he had heard of in that
country, for a circuit of fifty miles." A history of the United States
and a copy of Weems's "Life of Washington" laid the foundations of
his political education. That he read with h