and, and
it is probably from her that the boy Abraham inherited the character
that was to make his name the greatest in his country, if not in the
entire world.

As a boy Abraham had little or no chance to go to school, but he was so
industrious and eager to learn that he borrowed every book that he
could lay his hand on, and in this way he obtained a thorough knowledge
of the bible and of Shakespeare as well as of a few other classics,
which included AEsop's fables, Robinson Crusoe, a history of Washington
and the Pilgrim's Progress.

When Abraham was eight years old, his father moved to Indiana, and
there the first great sorrow of his life befell the little boy. His
mother died of a fever that appeared among the settlers, leaving
Abraham and his sister Sarah, a little girl of eleven, to do the
housework and the heavy chores of a backwoods farm. The following year
Thomas Lincoln went away to Kentucky to marry again, and he brought
back with him a big hearted woman named Sally Johnson, who had three
children by a former marriage.

This marriage by Thomas Lincoln was the best thing that could have
happened for his two motherless children. Sally Johnson was able to
give them better care and more comforts than they had ever known. She
inspired their father also to work more regularly and to put a door on
the cabin in which they lived. Abraham helped his father in clearing
the land and hewing the trees. He was big and strong for his age, and
was constantly swinging an ax or guiding a plow.

All the time when not engaged in these active forms of labor, Abraham
was reading and studying, by candle light or by firelight, chalking up
sums of arithmetic on a board or the back of a shovel when he lacked
paper to write them on, and striving in every way to gain for himself
an education. Owing to the remote region where he lived and the
constant moves that were made by his family, he had less than a year's
schooling in the entire course of his life,--but his eagerness to learn
counterbalanced this disadvantage and when he reached young manhood he
knew as much as many who had been to the finest schools in the country
from their earliest years and without interruption.

When he was twenty-one years old his father moved again. This time
Thomas Lincoln settled in Illinois, and Abraham worked without pay for
a year, helping him to clear his property and settle his land. Then, as
was the custom in those days, he left home to seek hi