It appears that the first approach of Lincoln to the formation of a life-ideal, his first patriotic vision of American citizenship, was derived from reading a life of Washington. A friendly neighbor loaned him the book. His book-shelf was a chink in the log house. One night it rained into his book-shelf and the next morning he found his borrowed book bucked up into a most unreadable shape. Lincoln’s introduction to Washington was unhappy and significant. Trivial as the incident might seem, it supplies suggestions of character on the way of superior worth to civilization. Events, one by one, build up or tear down together the structure of self or of the public system.
The Lincoln boy could have shielded himself, as to the damaged book, behind personal irresponsibility for an accident, or he could have flatly refused to make good. If so, we may well guess that he would never have been President of the United States, and would never have served America in its dire peril so as to be honored by the whole world. He was not that kind of a character. As we trace the steps of moral integrity, the trivial incident becomes powerfully significant. The Lincoln boy made good. He worked three days for the owner of the damaged book, so that another should not suffer loss through any kindness or good-will to him; also, beyond that, he could have no rest nor peace while any wrong existed between him and another man.
From that time on he had before him the vision of a great American. Washington became his ideal type of character, and that ideal no doubt helped much to make him the patient power he was in the great crisis of his nation’s existence.
The rough and hard never hurt any one if they are healthy interests; the rude and uncultured wrong no taste if they are moral; and poverty injures nobody when it is clean and persevering and safe. So the hard requirements, rude living and destitute means only strengthened the boy more and more for the heroic responsibilities requiring such a type of manhood.
It is said that he memorized and often repeated for self-encouragement the homely old verses of the song, “Try, Try Again.”
“When you strive, it’s no disgrace
Though you fail to win the race;
Bravely, then, in such a case,
Try, try again.
That which other folks can do,