A mile and a half is no great distance to walk to such a school as that, if children have shoes and the snow is not too deep. Reading and writing and the art of "ciphering" were to be walked after, and these were treasures none too common in the cabins of the earlier settlers of Indiana. It is possible that Abe did his walking more easily than the rest; but it is matter of record that before long he could "spell down" all the other scholars of Hazel Dorsey, and could read anything he could lay his hands on.

The first term of study was a short one, for the winter melted rapidly away, and with the coming of settled spring weather the school had to be closed, that teacher and pupils alike might turn their attention to planting corn and potatoes.

The school at the log schoolhouse on Little Pigeon Creek was closed indeed, and would not open again until another winter; but the one which Abraham Lincoln was really attending could not shut its door at all, and the lessons went on at all hours.

In the first place, the body which contained him was growing at such a tremendous rate that he was a man in height before he was fifteen years old, and by the time he passed his seventeenth birthday he was as tall as he ever would be. That is, he stood, barefooted, six feet and four inches of thin and bony awkwardness. It was just such a body, doubtless, as was required for the residence of such a boy as he was. There would never be any great amount of mere polish or elegance about either it or him; but vast stores of natural strength were forming in both, capable of undergoing severe training for the work before them.

Good Mrs. Lincoln very soon despaired of keeping Abraham in clothes that would fit him. It was not so much that he wore things out too rapidly, as that he grew out of and away from whatever she could put upon him. There was yet another difficulty. Cloth of any kind was scarce and dear, and a great part of any boy's apparel had to be made of buckskin,

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 Æsops'

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 Æsop 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.