THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF LIVING-CHILDHOOD

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HE safest capital on which to begin life is good health and sound morals. With these, permanent failure is almost impossible. There is not money enough in the banks of the world to buy them. In partnership with Industry and Thrift, they must succeed. Any man who possesses them has the wealth of the world within his reach. Education, social position, political power, financial credit-all these, then, but await your desire.

This is the capital upon which Abraham Lincoln began. His father was a woodsman who could neither read nor write; his mother was an orphan girl. His cabin home of rough-hewn logs sheltered but a single room; but here, on the banks of Nolen Creek, in desolate Hardin County, he started on life's journey.

Do you remember the first time that you left home? How you bade good-by to the old scenes? How you turned and looked back for one last lingering glance at the old place that you loved-and then wiped a tear away? You know, then, what it meant to the seven-year-old Lincoln when, with his little sister, he trudged behind his father and mother from the Kentucky wilds into southern Indiana, where, with an ax, they cut their way through the dense forests to start life anew.

Here, in the savage wilds of Little Pigeon Creek, they felled the trees for a new cabin. The bare earth, which turned to mud in the winter thaws, was its floor. There were no windows to let in the sunlight and not even a skin to hang over the doorway to shut out the sleet and snow. The little lad fell asleep on the heap of loose leaves-and he called it home.

Do you remember the first great sorrow that came into your life? The loved one whose lips you kissed for the last time? Whose eyes were never to look again into yours? Whose hand as you clasped it in your own was cold and white? You know, then, the grief that lay in the heart of this lad as he knelt sobbing beside his dying mother. You can feel, then, the touch of her hand as she laid it on his young head and whispered the last message from those loving lips: "Be good to your father and sister. Be kind to one another-and worship God." Your heart goes out to him as they lay her away in a rough box, hewn from the pine forest, and tenderly lower her to the resting place on the knoll where the sunlight pours its golden wreaths upon her grave. You know what was in his heart when in after years he bowed his head and called her "My angel mother."

THE UNFOLDING OF KNOWLEDGE-SCHOOL DAYS

IFE'S lessons are not all learned in a university. Poverty, toil, suffering these are the schools of discipline, and the man who passes through them has an education that all the universities of the earth could not give. The book of Nature does not teach the conjugation of verbs; it teaches the conjugation of life. It may not master the tongues of dead languages, but it does master the tongues of the thousand living languages-the language of the Heart, of the Hand, of Common Sense. It may not lead to a doctorate in science, but it does lead to the highest degree within the power of man-the degree of strong character.

The backwoods is the university that made Lincoln. Here he learned a lesson that few men ever learn-how to bear the burdens of life without complaint, and how to overcome them.

At ten years of age, he was walking nine miles a day to and from the little log schoolhouse in the woods. At night, he lay before the fireplace ciphering on a wooden shovel and scrawling his name on the logs of the cabin. A new world had been revealed to him-the world of knowledge. Within his humble home there had never been a newspaper or a story book, but now he had made the first great discovery of his life. He had found that within the covers of books lay the secrets that unlock the mysteries of the earth; that through them you can sit in the comradeship and listen to the wisdom of the wise men of the ages; that with them you cannot be alone, for the intimate friendship of the world's greatest men is yours.

This is the education that is within the reach of every man, woman and child in America today-the university of outdoor life and of books.

Do you remember the first book that you ever read? Possibly it was Esop's Fables or Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," or "Robinson Crusoe." These were the books that kindled the flame of desire in Lincoln's mind, until, at nineteen years of age, although his total schooling was less than a year, he had read every book that he could borrow within fifty miles of his home.

This was Lincoln's education. There he stood, long, lank, swarthy; six feet four inches tall; strong as a giant, a heart like the oak, and a head full of Common Sense-ready and eager to fight it out with Destiny.

THE REVELATION OF LIFE'S SECRETS-BOYHOOD

HOOSING an occupation is the first great crisis in life. Many a good farmer is spoiled in the making of a lawyer, and so it is through all the trades and life professions. There is in each one of us some natural tendency toward certain lines of work, and success depends largely upon giving heed to this warning. Whatever line of work you may choose there is always some opportunity to reach the top.

Abraham Lincoln did not choose his calling; he allowed it to choose him. He passed the apprenticeship of hard work and answered the call of duty wherever he found it. He was a wood chopper and a farm hand; he swung the ax and the scythe, slaughtered hogs and wielded the flail. A day's work was from sunrise to sunset. The pay, which was a quarter of a dollar, went to his father, to whom he owed all his time until noon of his twenty-first birthday. A ferryman offered thirty-seven cents a day for his services, on the deck as a bow hand, to help pole the craft down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. This was his first real revelation of the great channels of trade and commerce. He realized for the first time that he lived in a great world of throbbing humanity in which every man is trying to make the most of his short journey through it. He began to feel the beat of the human heart and the pulse of life itself. The great brotherhood of man, with its laughter and tears, gripped at his heart; and he found himself a man among men.

Do you remember the thrill that you felt when you earned the first dollar that was to be your very own? No matter what success may come to you, or whatever fortune you may accumulate, you will never be as rich as that again. It was this same feeling that Lincoln felt when in after life he told the story.

"I was about eighteen years of age," he said. "Two men hailed me and asked me to take their trunks to a steamer which waited for them in midstream. I sculled them out to the steamer. They got on board, and I lifted the trunks and put them on the deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out, ‘You have forgotten to pay me.' Each of them took from his pocket a silver half dollar and threw it on the bottom of my boat. You may think it was a very little thing, and in these times it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time."

THE THRILL OF AMBITION-YOUTH

VERY man must make his own place in the world. There is no one who will do it for him. It takes good grit to hew your way to the front. Abraham Lincoln started out into the world with an ax over his shoulder. An ox team had drawn the family and its scanty possessions from Indiana to Illinois. The wagon wheels were but round blocks of wood cut from the trunk of an oak tree, with a hole in the center for the axle. He was now twenty-two years of age, and, having helped build the new home in the wilderness, he bid good-by to his father and stood alone in the world-his own master and his own

servant.

Look-far down the road you can see that tall, gaunt, sad-faced youth; his coat ragged; his hat battered; his trousers of torn and patched homespun-and, as he passes from view, you feel that one not wholly unlike yourself has passed by; that if he, with only struggle behind him and struggle ahead of him, has the courage to fight it out with the might of manhood, then you cannot stand by as an idler and a coward.

The experiences that Lincoln met were those that we all meet in the necessity of earning a livelihood. He took whatever honest occupation came to him; he split rails; he became a flatboatman; he worked in the country store at New Salem, a village of twenty log houses, and more than all, he left kindness wherever he went. He watched with the sick; if a widow were in need of firewood he would cut it for her; if he made a mistake in weight or change, he did not sleep until he had corrected the error-and through this he received the first and highest honor of his life, the title of "Honest Abe."

There comes a day to each of us when we decide whether we are to be the leader or the follower of men. With Lincoln, as with many youths today, it was his physical prowess. Remarkable stories were told of his giant strength, of his picking up and moving a chicken house weighing 600 pounds, and how he could raise a barrel from the ground and lift it until, standing erect, he could drink from the bunghole, and by means of ropes and straps fastened about his hips he could lift a box of stones weighing nearly 1000 pounds; but his first real victory came when he thrashed the chief bully of the village and won the admiration and respect of the community. It was this that resulted in his being chosen captain in the Black Hawk War, and sent his fame broadcast through the frontier settlements. It is as true today as it was then, that, whether it be in brawn or brain, it is the survival of the fittest.

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THE DISCOVERY OF POWER-CITIZENSHIP

'HE man who is not interested in public affairs cannot hope to succeed. He has no right to either complain or ask help, for he has deliberately shut himself off from the world. In this great brotherhood of men, which we call a democracy, every man is pledged upon his honor to do his part for the community in which he lives. Lincoln laid the foundation for his own success when he discovered the power and opportunity of American citizenship.

Lincoln was twenty-three years of age when he found his birthright and entered into the full privileges of citizenship by attending the public meetings in the little town of New Salem, and expressing his opinion and power by voice and ballot.

"I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them," he said, "but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only some time to be right than at all times to be wrong, so as soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous I shall be ready to renounce them." His townspeople made him their candidate for the state legislature, and, in accepting their leadership, he declared: "My greatest ambition is to be truly esteemed of my fellowmen by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.”

This was the beginning of his political career-and it began with defeat, for, having no acquaintance outside of the village, the residents from the other towns in the county jeered and asked: "Who is this Abraham Lincoln?" and the only response was ridicule and laughter at the sight of the gawky youth with his tan brogans and blue yarn socks.

As a country merchant, he failed and was left $1,100 in debt, and for years afterwards gave his creditors every dollar that he could earn above the cost of living. "That debt," he said in later years, "was the greatest obstacle I have ever met in life. It was my national debt!"

"I will succeed now, anyway," he declared. During the hours after the hard labor of the day, he pored over the law books which he borrowed by walking twenty miles to Springfield and back. At night he would go to the cooper's shop and build a fire of shavings and read by its light. Whenever he gained a new point in law he would put it into practice by drawing up the legal papers for the neighbors. It is such a man as this, with courage to start life again with the future mortgaged, who wins!