s memory, and even to regain them in visible form
for reference when the school-book might no longer be in his hands or
possession.

Mr. Lincoln has himself written that these three different schools were
"kept successively by Andrew Crawford, ---- Swaney, and Azel W. Dorsey."
Other witnesses state the succession somewhat differently. The important
fact to be gleaned from what we learn about Mr. Lincoln's schooling is
that the instruction given him by these five different teachers--two in
Kentucky and three in Indiana, in short sessions of attendance scattered
over a period of nine years--made up in all less than a twelvemonth.
He said of it in 1860, "Abraham now thinks that the aggregate of all his
schooling did not amount to one year." This distribution of the tuition
he received was doubtless an advantage. Had it all been given him at his
first school in Indiana, it would probably not have carried him half
through Webster's "Elementary Spelling Book." The lazy or indifferent
pupils who were his schoolmates doubtless forgot what was taught them at
one time before they had opportunity at another; but to the exceptional
character of Abraham, these widely separated fragments of instruction
were precious steps to self-help, of which he made unremitting use.

It is the concurrent testimony of his early companions that he employed
all his spare moments in keeping on with some one of his studies. His
stepmother says: "Abe read diligently.... He read every book he could
lay his hands on; and when he came across a passage that struck him, he
would write it down on boards, if he had no paper, and keep it there
until he did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it.
He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all
things, and thus preserved them." There is no mention that either he or
other pupils had slates and slate-pencils to use at school or at home,
but he found a ready substitute in pieces of board. It is stated that he
occupied his long evenings at home doing sums on the fire-shovel. Iron
fire-shovels were a rarity among pioneers; they used, instead a broad,
thin clapboard with one end narrowed to a handle. In cooking by the open
fire, this domestic implement was of the first necessity to arrange
piles of live coals on the hearth, over which they set their "skillet"
and "oven," upon the lids of which live coals were also heaped.

Upon such a wooden shovel Abraham was able to work his su