The Backwoods Boy; or, The Boyhood and Manhood of Abraham Lincoln

by Jr. Horatio Alger

“Right at last!” said Master Crawford, whose back was turned, and who had not seen Abe’s dumb show. “It’s lucky for you all that one of the class knew how to spell, or I would have kept my word, and kept you all in.”

Though Master Crawford’s school had a department of manners, there was no department of English composition. Abe took this up on his own account, according to his schoolmate Nat Grigsby, and probably the teacher consented to examine his essays, though he did not require them of his other pupils. Considering the kindness of heart which he afterward exhibited on many occasions, my readers will not be surprised to hear that his first composition was against cruelty to animals. This is said to have been called forth by the conduct of some of his fellow-pupils in catching terrapins and putting coals of fire on their backs.

After a time Master Crawford’s school was discontinued, and some two or three years later Abe attended another, kept by a Mr. Swaney. It gives us an idea of the boy’s earnest desire to obtain an education, when we learn that he had to walk four and a half miles to it from his father’s house, and this walk had to be repeated, of course, in the afternoon. How many of my young readers would care sufficiently for an education to walk nine miles a day, to and from school?

We are told that the new school-house was no more impressive, architecturally, than the first, already described. In fact, it was very similar, though it had two chimneys instead of one. The course of instruction does not seem to have been any higher than at Mr. Crawford’s school. The department of “manners” was omitted, though it is doubtful whether many of the pupils could have appeared to advantage in a city ball-room.

Probably Abe did not attend Mr. Swaney’s school many weeks, and this, we are told, was the end of his school attendance anywhere. He had, however, in that short time imbibed a love of learning, which is to be credited rather to his own tastes than to the influence of his teachers, and carried on by himself the studies of which he had learned something in the humble backwoods school. We are told that he was already the equal of his teachers in learning, which probably was not saying much. Nevertheless he did not regard his education as finished. He had his books, and kept on studying at home, or wherever he was employed. In the hard work which fell to his lot he did not take much interest. He knew that it was necessary, but he did not enjoy it. He preferred to labor with his brain rather than with his hands, and often seemed so listless and preoccupied that he got the reputation of being “awful lazy.”

This is what his neighbor, Romine, says of him: “He worked for me; was always reading and thinking; used to get mad at him. I say, Abe was awful lazy; he would laugh, and talk, and crack jokes and tell stories all the time; didn’t love work, but did dearly love his pay. He worked for me frequently, a few days only at a time.... Lincoln said to me one day, that his father taught him to work, but never learned him to love it.”

All the information we can obtain about this early time is interesting, for it was then that Abe was laying the foundation of his future eminence. His mind and character were slowly developing, and shaping themselves for the future.

From Mr. Lamon’s Life I quote a paragraph which will throw light upon his habits and tastes at the age of seventeen:

“Abe loved to lie under a shade-tree, or up in the loft of the cabin, and read, cipher, and scribble. At night he sat by the chimney ‘jamb,’ and ciphered by the light of the fire, on the wooden fire-shovel. When the shovel was fairly covered, he would shave it off with Tom Lincoln’s drawing-knife, and begin again. In the day-time he used boards for the same purpose, out of doors, and went through the shaving process everlastingly. His step-mother repeats often that ‘he read every book he could lay his hands on.’ She says, ‘Abe read diligently. He read every book 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 there until he did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them.’ ”

I am tempted also to quote a reminiscence of John Hanks, who lived with the Lincolns from the time Abe was fourteen to the time he became eighteen years of age: “When Lincoln—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 on a chair, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read. He and I worked barefooted, grubbed it, ploughed, mowed, and cradled together; ploughed corn, gathered it, and shucked corn. Abraham read constantly when he had opportunity.”