and that is a material which can hardly cease to shrink and shrivel. So, while Abe's long legs were continually lengthening, his buckskin trowsers were continually diminishing, from day to day, in their capacity for holding or covering the legs they were provided for. However loose they might be when made, a few wettings in dewy corn-fields and rainy woods, or in fording the creeks and sloughs, would surely produce a tighter fit than any tailor could plan.

Stockings were out of the question at any time; and when, on special occasions or in cold weather, the luxury of shoes was to be indulged in, these were always of a low-quartered leathersaving pattern. All shoemaking among the settlers was done at home or by some neighbor who had picked up enough of the cobbler's art to put together such materials as might be brought to him.

There was apt to be an ample length of bare blue ankles between the lower border of Abe's tight buckskins and the tops of his home-made shoes; and this was a peculiarity of his wardrobe which clung to him for years and years. Nevertheless, except for growing out of it so fast and so far, he did not differ much in his apparel from any other boy among the settlers near Little Pigeon Creek. Some of the very latest arrivals might wear for a season the garments they came in, but in due course of wear and tear these were sure to be replaced by the regular backwoods uniform.

The boys were somewhat worse off than the girls with reference to clothing, for a gown of linsey-woolsey or of homespun jeans, no matter how skimp its pattern or how high its waist might be, could be provided with "tucks" to let out, from time to time, like the reefs of a sail. The forest maidens, however, were as independent as their brothers in the matter of shoes and stockings. Strict economy required that, in all good weather and in some that was a little bad, a young lady going to meeting or to an evening party should carry her shoes in her hand until near her destination. It was even expected that

if, in the course of an evening, there should be over-much dancing performed, she should take them off again, lest a good pair of shoes should be wasted frivolously.

Social features were steadily increasing in number and importance, now there were so many neighbors within a few miles of Mr. Gentry's store. The beginning of a village had been fairly made, and religious meetings of several kinds, and parties and merry-makings of a great many kinds, broke rapidly in upon the old-time monotony of frontier life. The woods had ceased to be a wilderness.

CHAPTER VI.

BORROWED TREASURES.

The Art of Story-Telling-The Wonders in Books-The Uses of Written Words.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN was just the kind of boy to speedily make the acquaintance of every new family as soon as he heard of its arrival.

It was not only that he was of an eminently sociable disposition. His few weeks of training under Hazel Dorsey had once more brought to his mind a great and mysterious fact of human life, and its meaning was taking feverish possession of him. There were books!

He had seen a very few, and knew but little about the manner of their making; and even less definite were his ideas of what might be in them. There was something weird and wonderful in their very existence, and there was no telling what wonder of a book a new family might own and bring with them. He already knew of men who had brought whole libraries; two, three, four, perhaps half a dozen books gathered under one roof. It was worth while to walk a few miles, and then to talk around and bear a helping hand at chopping or something, to make acquaintance with human beings from whom such a treasure as a bound volume might perhaps be afterwards borrowed.

The unprinted learning of the backwoods, fact and fiction, history and humor, travels from memory to memory by word of mouth. Abe already knew and could tell more stories of all sorts than any other scholar of Hazel Dorsey; but he came home one day from a borrowing expedition with a book that could beat him completely. He had found a copy of Esops'

Fables, and he was to learn from it how to put sharp points to his stories, at need, and make invaluable weapons of them. Before he had read that book through more than a score of times, he could make over into an arrowy "fable," with a moral of some kind or a sting at the end of it, almost any anecdote or incident with which his memory was stored, and Esop had been his schoolmaster in the subtle art of doing it well.

A good story-teller was an important public acquisition, and Abe's popularity was assured in all the wide and growing circle of his acquaintances.

The Fables were a borrowed book, and had to be returned in time; but before long their place was filled by a story-teller of a very different kind, sure to leave behind him an equally indelible mark on the mind of his young reader.

Abe's new prize came near getting him into disgrace for neglecting his share of the growing corn. How could a boy do justice to a corn-field with such a treat awaiting him in his mother's cupboard at the house?

An English tinker had written it: a low fellow who spent many years of his life in jail for using his tongue too freely. His name was John Bunyan, and he could hardly have been poorer if he had settled in Indiana before it became a State. Still, he had written the "Pilgrim's Progress," and Abe Lincoln had now borrowed a stray copy of it. Before that book went home, Abe knew it almost by heart. It was impossible to do that without learning a great deal, even if a dull and unimpressible boy had been the learner; and the lessons taught by Bunyan through that marvelous pilgrimage were the very lessons Abe Lincoln's education thus far had left him in need of. All the life around him, from his cradle, had been and still was coarse, rude, earthy, sensuous, to the last degree sordid and unspiritual.

Other books turned up here and there, and the family Bible at home was an unfailing resource to Abe for everything but theology.

The summer and fall went by and winter came, but no school came with it. For some reason Hazel Dorsey failed to gather again his scattered pupils, and it was a full year more before the little log seminary could renew its usefulness. Then came a new teacher with many new ways. Mr. Andrew Crawford saw at once that the young people who came trooping around him were in need of other things as well as reading and writing, or even arithmetic. His own scholarship was equal to reasonable demands, and he could carry them as far as the "rule of three," but he could appease no hunger for any higher mathematics. Such merely ornamental branches as grammar and geography were not insisted on by the parents who employed him, but he was willing to add, of his own free gift, other and valuable instruction. From the outset he began to teach them "manners," and no such thing had been heard of before in all that settlement. Every pupil was taught and drilled in the proper method of getting into a room and getting out of it, with all the kindred niceties of making introductions and acquaintanceships. There was abundant fun in it for the boys and girls; and the next best thing to that was Mr. Crawford's great attention to the correctness of their spelling.

It was not long before Abe's book-training began to show its fruits. He was acknowledged to be the leader of the school in the matter of putting together the right letters to make up a word. He became, in fact, a sort of good-natured walking dictionary for the rest, and it was at times needful to turn so willing a prompter out of doors during contested matches or perplexing recitations.

One day the spelling-class embraced nearly the entire school, and Abe had been duly turned out, after a terrific threat from Mr. Crawford that he would keep his victims there all night if they failed to give the correct spelling of the hard word "defied." There was indeed work before a mob of young people every soul of whom was possessed with a conviction that the verbal