The mirror., 1920-02-12
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Maryred President Most ustous Example of What World
Calls Self Made Man
Selected

1t is small wonder that Lincoln's life is
upheld to the poor boy as shining example
of what determination to learn and succeed
will do.
Lincoln's grandfather, like many others,
followed the magnetic Daniel Boone into the
wilderness of Kentucky. The Lincolns at
that time were not poor folks, as many have
believed, for the grandfather, whose name
also was Abraham, sold his property for ST.
900 before he set out for the unclaimed lands
where some say the mammoths still existed.
But when later he died, Thomas, the
father of the future president, did not in
herit much, if anything, and had to start out
for himself at an early age. He married
Nancy Hanks, the neice of the man he
worked for, and she became the mother of
Abraham Lincoln, the president.
Kentucky then (18O9) had been state
for seventeen years, but it was a wild wilder
ness of land. There were few books, no
schools in the modern sense, and little hope
for anything but hard work. 1t was exactly
the kind of country for a great man to
make start in, for unless he had some ele-
ments of greatness he never would achieve
his goal.
1t was country of hard knocks, as
we'll as hard work, and it all made for econ
omy of time and study. Lincoln's mother,
who was bright, delicate woman, taught
her son as much as she could. A visiting
schoolmaster gave him some lessons in the
ordinary "Three RS" The country was so
sparcely settled and so distant from civiliza-
ton that at the little church the services
that were held were conducted by itinerant
clergymen.
The boy Lincoln grew up here in
small log cabin that was without windows,
and whose wide chimney was built on the
outside of the cabin. At night log in the
fireplace gave all the illumination the place
afforded. By this freight, to the music of
cracking burning logs, young Lincoln, ex-
tended fiat on the floor, studied and worked
out little problems in arithmetic, which in
that section was regarded as of greater inn
portance than deep knowledge of English
literature.
Lincoln's mother died when he was
nine years of age, or about year after his
father moved to Indiana, and the following
year his father married Mrs. Sally Bush
Johnston. Contrary to the impression, main
ly created by the old fairy tales, the second
Mrs. Lincoln was model stepmother.
AT the same time young Lincoln was
working as farm hand. He borrowed
books from neighbors and greedily devoured
them. The one book that impressed him
most was Weems' "Life of Washington"
He received his exalted idea of the Father
of His Country from that book, which del
fled the first president rather than told his
life. But Lincoln believed in it and it in
Auenced his life
He read Robinson Crusoe" and Bun
yan's "Pilgrims Progress" and history of
the United States, and it was on these that
he founded all his knowledge of biography,
history and literature. But he knew those
books by heart, for he had to memorize them,
as they all were borrowed. He walked miles
to store where St. Louis newspaper was
taken to borrow it, and thus he received his
news of current events.
And all the while he was working, and
working hard. Now ferrying, now blowing,
but always in this backwoods country, for he
was quite young man when his father re-
moved to Illinois.
Lincoln was about twenty-five at the
time when he forsook farming and sought
position as clerk in country store.
Whether Lincoln ever would have been
heard of had not the Black Hawk war oc-
CURED about year after he went to work at
New Salem, Sangamon county, remains a
question. 1t need not bother any one, how
ever, because the war did occur and Lincoln
did go into it as captain of volunteers.
This might be said to have been the
turning point in his career. Up to this time
he had not found himself He was study
ing, but drifting. He does not appear to
have had any aim in his life beyond the am
bition to educate himself and to succeed.
Lincoln afterward said that his exper-
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