The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-11-25
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Young Lincoln Mads the Best Of scanty schooling

Young Lincoln Made the Best Of scanty Schooling
AS Abraham had been only seven
/ years old when he left Kentucky, the
little beginnings he learned in the
schools kept by Riney and Hazel in
that State must have been very slight,
probably only his alphabet, or at
most only three or four pages of
Webster's Elementary Spelling
Book" The multiplication table
was still mystery to him and he
could read or write only the words
he spelled. His first two years in
Indiana seem to have passed without
schooling of any sort, and the school
he attended shortly after coming un-
der the care of his stepmother was of
the simplest kind, for the Pigeon
Creek settlement numbered only eight
or ten poor families, and they lived
deep in the forest, where, even if
they had had the money for such
Inquiries, it would have been impos-
sible to buy books, states, pens, ink or
paper. 1t is worthy of note, however,
that in cur Western country, even
under such difficulties, a schoolhouse
was one of the first buildings to rise
in every frontier settlement. Abra-
hams second school in Indiana was
held when he was ID years old and
the third in his seventeenth year.
By that time he had more books
and better teachers, but he had to
walk four or five miles to reach them.
We know that he learned to write and
was provided with pen, ink and a
copybook-a very small supply of
writing paper, for copies have been
printed of several scraps on which he
carefully wrote down tables of long
measure, land measure and dry mea-
sure, as well as examples in multipli-
cation and compound division, from
his arithmetic. He was never able to
go to school again after this time, and
though the instruction he received
from his FIVE teachers extended over
a period of nine years, it must be re-
membered that it made up in all less
than one twelve month "that the
aggregate of all his schooling did not
amount to one year" The fact that
he received this instruction, as he
himself said, 'by Titles" was doubt
less an advantage. A lazy or indiffer-
ent boy would, of course, have for
gotten what was taught him at one
time before he had opportunity at an
other but Abraham was neither in
different nor lazy, and these widely
separated fragments of instruction
were precious steps to self-help.
He pursued his studies with very un-
usual purpose and determination, not
only to understand them at the mo-
ment, 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 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 copybook, 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 broad, thin clapboard with one
end narrowed to a handle, arranging
with this the piles of Goals upon the
hearth, over which they set their
"skillet" and ''oven" to do their cook
ing. 1t was on such a wooden shovel
that Abraham worked his sums by
the Pickering freight, making his
figures with a piece of charcoal, and
when the shovel was all covered TAX
ing drawing knife and shaving it of
clean again.
The hours that he was able to de-
vote 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 fathers farm or hiring his
youthful strength to neighbors who
had need of help in work Of field or
forest. In pursuit of his knowledge
he was on an uphill 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 neigh
borhood. The list is short one
"RC Crimson Crusoe," "Ksop's Fa
bles," "Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Pro.
gress," Weem's Life of Washing
tom and History of the United
States" When everything else had
been read he resloutely began on the
Revised Statutes OF Indiana, /" which
Dave Turnham, the constable, had il
daily use but permitted him to come
to his house and read.-St. Nicholas