ools, made by smoothing the flat
side of a split log and putting sticks into auger holes underneath. The
tables were as simply made, except that they stood on four legs instead of
three. The crude bedsteads in the corners of the cabin were made by
sticking poles in between the logs at right angles to the wall, the
outside corner where the poles met being supported by a crotched stick
driven into the ground. Ropes were then stretched from side to side,
making a framework upon which shucks and leaves were heaped for bedding,
and over all were thrown the skins of wild animals for a covering. Pegs
driven into the wall served as a stairway to the loft, where there was
another bed of leaves. Here little Abe slept.

Abraham Lincoln's schooling was brief--not more than a year in all, and
the schools he attended were like those we became acquainted with in the
early settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee. During his last school-days
he had to go daily a distance of four and one-half miles from his home,
with probably no roadway except the deer path through the forest. His
midday lunch was a corn dodger, which he carried in his pocket.

In spite of this meagre schooling however, the boy, by his self-reliance,
resolute purpose, and good reading habits, acquired the very best sort of
training for his future life. He had no books at his home, and, of course,
there were but few to be had in that wild country from other homes. But
among those he read over and over again, while a boy, were the Bible,
"AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," "A History of
the United States," and Weems's "Life of Washington," all books of the
right kind.

[Illustration: Lincoln Studying by Firelight.]

His stepmother said of him: "He read everything 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 before him until he could get
paper. Then he would copy it, look at it, commit it to memory, and repeat
it."

When night came he would find a seat in the corner by the fireside, or
stretch out at length on the floor in front of it, and by the firelight
write, or work sums in arithmetic, on a wooden shovel, using a charred
stick for a pencil. After covering the shovel, he would shave it off and
use the surface over again.

The way in which he came to own a "Life of Washington" is interesting.
Having borrowed the book, he took it to bed with him i