more squalid and
miserable than the home in which Abraham Lincoln was born--a one-roomed
cabin without floor or window in what was then the wilderness of
Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier life which swiftly moved
westward from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, always in advance of
schools and churches, of books and money, of railroads and newspapers,
of all things which are generally regarded as the comforts and even
necessaries of life. His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless,
content if he could keep soul and body together for himself and his
family, was ever seeking, without success, to better his unhappy
condition by moving on from one such scene of dreary desolation to
another. The rude society which surrounded them was not much better. The
struggle for existence was hard, and absorbed all their energies. They
were fighting the forest, the wild beast, and the retreating savage.
From the time when he could barely handle tools until he attained his
majority, Lincoln's life was that of a simple farm laborer, poorly clad,
housed, and fed, at work either on his father's wretched farm or hired
out to neighboring farmers. But in spite, or perhaps by means, of this
rude environment, he grew to be a stalwart giant, reaching six feet four
at nineteen, and fabulous stories are told of his feats of strength.
With the growth of this mighty frame began that strange education which
in his ripening years was to qualify him for the great destiny that
awaited him, and the development of those mental faculties and moral
endowments which, by the time he reached middle life, were to make him
the sagacious, patient, and triumphant leader of a great nation in the
crisis of its fate. His whole schooling, obtained during such odd times
as could be spared from grinding labor, did not amount in all to as much
as one year, and the quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible
grade, including only the elements of reading, writing, and ciphering.
But out of these simple elements, when rightly used by the right man,
education is achieved, and Lincoln knew how to use them. As so often
happens, he seemed to take warning from his father's unfortunate
example. Untiring industry, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and
an ever-growing desire to rise above his surroundings, were early
manifestations of his character.

Books were almost unknown in that community, but the Bible was in
every house, and somehow or other Pilgrim's Progres