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Think of a young man of six feet and four inches in coonskin and deerhide, who could sink an axe deeper into a tree than any pioneer in that heroic region, and who yet had perseverance enough in his cabin home to read “The Revised Statutes of Indiana” until he could almost repeat them by heart!

He became a leader and could gather an audience by merely mounting a stump and waving his hands. Nor was that all. He frequently stopped brawls and acted as umpire between disputants. Another side of his nature was displayed when he found the neighborhood drunkard freezing by the roadside, carried him in his arms to the tavern and worked over him for hours.

When Lincoln’s sister Sarah married Aaron Grigsby in 1826, the seventeen-year-old giant composed a song and sang it at the wedding. Here are the concluding verses:

The woman was not taken

From Adam’s feet we see,

So he must not abuse her,

The meaning seems to be.

The woman was not taken

From Adam’s head we know,

To show she must not rule him—