is likely that the multiplication table was as yet an unfathomed
mystery, and that he could not write or read more than the words he
spelled. There is no record at what date he was able again to go to
school in Indiana. Some of his schoolmates think it was in his tenth
year, or soon after he fell under the care of his stepmother. The
school-house was a low cabin of round logs, a mile and a half from the
Lincoln home, with split logs or "puncheons" for a floor, split logs
roughly leveled with an ax and set up on legs for benches, and a log cut
out of one end and the space filled in with squares of greased paper for
window panes. The main light in such primitive halls of learning was
admitted by the open door. It was a type of school building common in
the early West, in which many a statesman gained the first rudiments of
knowledge. Very often Webster's "Elementary Spelling Book" was the only
text-book. Abraham's first Indiana school was probably held five years
before Gentryville was located and a store established there. Until then
it was difficult, if not impossible, to obtain books, slates, pencils,
pen, ink, and paper, and their use was limited to settlers who had
brought them when they came. It is reasonable to infer that the Lincoln
family had no such luxuries, and, as the Pigeon Creek settlement
numbered only eight or ten families there must have been very few pupils
to attend this first school. Nevertheless, it is worthy of special note
that even under such difficulties and limitations, the American thirst
for education planted a school-house on the very forefront of every
settlement.

Abraham's second school in Indiana was held about the time he was
fourteen years old, and the third in his seventeenth year. By this time
he probably had better teachers and increased facilities, though with
the disadvantage of having to walk four or five miles to the
school-house. He learned to write, and was provided with pen, ink, and a
copy-book, and probably a very limited supply of writing-paper, for
facsimiles have been printed of several scraps and fragments upon which
he had carefully copied tables, rules, and sums from his arithmetic,
such as those of long measure, land measure, and dry measure, and
examples in multiplication and compound division. All this indicates
that he pursued his studies with a very unusual purpose and
determination, not only to understand them at the moment, but to imprint
them indelibly upon hi