Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1921-02-04
Education Might Be
Termed Passion of
Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln once gave to a
casual acquaintance whom he met on
a railway train the following particu-
lars as to his education:
swell, as to education, the newspa-
pers are correct. / never went to
school more than six months in my life.
can say this: that among my earliest
recollections / remember how, when
a mere child, used to get irritated
when anyone talked to me in way
| could not understand. do not think
l ever got angry at anything else in
my life; but that always disturbed
my temper, and has ever since. ! can
remember going to my little bedroom
after hearing the neighbors talk of
an evening with my father, and spend
ing no small part of the night walk
ing up and down and trying to make
out what was the exact meaning Of
some of their, to me, dark sayings.
| could not sleep, although / tried to,
when | got on such a hunt for an idea
until / had caught it; and when /
thought had got it was not salts
fed until / had put it in language
plain enough, as I thought for any
boy / knew to comprehend. This was
a kind of passion with me and has
stuck by me for am never easy now,
when / am handling a thought, until
l have bounded it north and bounded
it south and bounded it east and
bounded it west"
Supplementing these "reminiscences
by a few extracts from an article in
the Encyclopedia Britannica, we learn
Of Lincoln that His own mother
taught him to read, and his stepmoth-
err urged him to study. He read and
reread in early boyhood the Bible,
Aesop, Robinson Crusoe,' Pilgrims
Progress Weem's Life of Washing
ton,' and History of the United
States, and later read every book he
could borrow from the neighbors,
Burns and Shakespeare becoming ia
vorites. He borrowed a grammar and
other books. sought explanations from
the village schoolmaster, and began
to read law. In 1884 his political
friend and colleague, John Todd Stu
art a lawyer in full practice, had
urged him to fit himself for the bar,
and had lent him text books; and
Lincoln, working diligently, was adj
mitted to the bar in September, 1886.
His mental qualities were a quick
analytic perception. strong logical pow
ers, a tenacious memory, liberal es-
innate and tolerance of the opinions
of others, ready intuition of human
nature; and perhaps his most valu-'
able faculty was rare ability to di-
vest himself of all feeling or passion
in weighing motives of persons or
problems of state. His speech and
Gliction were plain, terse, forcible. Re
lating anecdotes with appreciatlve hui
NOR and fascinating dramatic skill, he
used them freely and effectively in
conversation and argument. He had
unchanging faith in self-government.
THE people, he said. are the rightful
masters of both congresses and courts,
not to overthrow the Constitution but
to overthrow the men who pervert
the constitution.
These words, just quoted. Of this
self-educated man, one of the greatest
and simplest of Americans and one
who acquired by indomitable will
mastery of self-expression, have their
bearing on our problems of today,
which after all are not essentially diff
ferent from the problems of those 9th
err times that tried mems souls"