Abraham Lincoln's schooling was brief--not more than a year in all. Such schools as he attended were nothing like the graded schools of to-day. The buildings were rough log cabins with the earth for floor and oiled paper for windows. Desks were unknown, the little school-house being furnished with rude benches made of split logs, after the manner of the stools and tables in the Lincoln home. The teachers were ignorant men, who taught the children a little spelling, reading, writing, and ciphering. While attending the last school, Abe had to go daily a distance of four and a half miles from his home.
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 but few books at his home, and found it impossible in that wild country to find many in any other homes. Among those which he read over and over again, while a boy, were the Bible, "Æsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," a History of the United States, and "Weems's Life of Washington."
His step-mother 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."
His step-brother said: "When Abe and I returned to the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread, take down a book, sit down, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read." When night came he would find a seat in the corner by the fireside, or stretch out at length on the floor, and write or work sums in arithmetic on a wooden shovel, using a charred stick for a pencil or pen. When he had covered the shovel, he would shave off the surface and begin over again.
Having borrowed a copy of the "Life of Washington" on one occasion, he took it to bed with him in the loft and read until his candle gave out. Then before going to sleep, he tucked the book into a crevice of the logs in order that he might have it at hand as soon as daylight would permit him to read the next morning. But during the night a storm came up, and the rain beat in upon the book, wetting it through and through. With heavy heart Lincoln took it back to its owner, who told him that it should be his if he would work three days to pay for it. Eagerly agreeing to do this, the boy carried his new possession home in triumph. This book had a marked influence over his future.