e:

"Time, what an empty vapor 'tis,
And days, how swift they are!
Swift as an Indian arrow--
Fly on like a shooting star.
The present moment, just, is here,
Then slides away in haste,
That we can never say they're ours,
But only say they're past."

As he grew older his handwriting improved and he was often asked to "set
copies" for other boys to follow. In the book of a boy named
Richardson, he wrote this prophetic couplet:

"Good boys who to their books apply
Will all be great men by and by."

A "MOTHER'S BOY"--HIS FOOD AND CLOTHING

Dennis Hanks related of his young companion: "As far as food and
clothing were concerned, the boy had plenty--such as it
was--'corndodgers,' bacon and game, some fish and wild fruits. We had
very little wheat flour. The nearest mill was eighteen miles. A hoss
mill it was, with a plug (old horse) pullin' a beam around; and Abe used
to say his dog could stand and eat the flour as fast as it was made,
_and then be ready for supper_!

"For clothing he had jeans. He was grown before he wore all-wool pants.
It was a new country, and he was a raw boy, rather a bright and likely
lad; but the big world seemed far ahead of him. We were all slow-goin'
folks. But he had the stuff of greatness in him. He got his rare sense
and sterling principles from both parents. But Abe's kindliness, humor,
love of humanity, hatred of slavery, all came from his mother. I am
free to say Abe was a 'mother's boy.'"

Dennis used to like to tell of Abe's earliest ventures in the fields of
literature: "His first readin' book was Webster's speller. Then he got
hold of a book--I can't rickilect the name. It told about a feller, a
nigger or suthin', that sailed a flatboat up to a rock, and the rock was
magnetized and drawed the nails out of his boat, an' he got a duckin',
or drownded, or suthin', I forget now. (This book, of course, was 'The
Arabian Nights.') Abe would lay on the floor with a chair under his
head, and laugh over them stories by the hour. I told him they was
likely lies from end to end; but he learned to read right well in them."

His stock of books was small, but they were the right kind--the Bible,
"The Pilgrim's Progress," AEsop's Fables, "Robinson Crusoe," a history of
the United States, and the Statutes of Indiana. This last was a strange
book for a boy to read, but Abe pored over it as eagerly