Читать книгу Why We Love Lincoln онлайн

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This is the real Abraham Lincoln, who read, and read, and read; whose constant spells of brooding abstraction, eyes fixed, dreaming face, gave him a reputation for laziness among some of his shallow fellows; who would crouch down in the forest or sit on a fence-rail for hours to study a book; who would lie on his stomach at night in front of the fireplace and, having no paper or slate, would write and cipher with charcoal on the wooden shovel, on boards and the hewn sides of logs, shaving them clean when he wanted to write again.

Here is his cousin’s picture of him at the age of fourteen:

“When Abe and I returned to the house from work he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn bread, sit down, take a book, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read. We grubbed, plowed, mowed and worked together barefooted in the field. Whenever Abe had a chance in the field while at work, or at the house, he would stop and read.”

His principal books were an arithmetic, the Bible, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Robinson Crusoe,” Weems’ “Life of Washington,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and a history of the United States. He became the best speller and penman in his neighborhood. Yet there was a vein of waggery in him which occasionally found a vent in such written verse as this: