“Yes, Mr. Dorsey keeps school about a mile and a half from here, near the Little Pigeon Creek meeting-house.”
“You and Nancy and Dennis must go there.” Mrs. Lincoln broached the subject to her husband.
“Abe ought to go to school, Thomas,” she said, “and so ought the other children.”
“I don’t know as I can spare him,” said his father. “I need his help in the shop and on the farm.”
“He can find time out of school hours. The boy must have an education.”
“I agree to that, wife. It shall be as you say.”
In Mr. Dorsey’s school Abe’s studies were elementary. His time was given to reading, writing, and ciphering. The school-house was about as primitive as the Lincoln cabin before the improvements were made on it. It was built of unhewn logs, and holes stuffed with greased paper supplied the place of windows. It was low-studded, being barely six feet high. The scholars studied in classes, and Abe’s ambition was excited, so that he soon came to be looked upon as one of the foremost scholars.
A year or two later, in the same humble school-house, a new teacher named Andrew Crawford wielded the ferule. He was, it may be inferred, a better scholar than Mr. Dorsey, and was able to carry his pupils further.
Abe was now in his fifteenth year, and was growing at an alarming rate. He was already nearly six feet in height, and must have presented a singular appearance in the rustic garb in which he presented himself at this temple of learning. I quote Mr. Lamon’s description of his physical appearance and dress:
“He was growing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full height of six feet four inches. He was long, wiry, and strong; while his big feet and hands and the length of his legs and arms were out of all proportion to his small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy, and Mrs. Gentry says that his skin was shrivelled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey-wolsey shirt, and a cap made of the skin of an opposum or a coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs, but failed by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes. Twelve inches remained uncovered and exposed that much of ‘shin-bone—sharp, blue, and narrow.’ ‘He would always come to school thus, good-humoredly and laughing,’ says his old friend, Nat Grigsby. ‘He was always in good health, never was sick, had an excellent constitution, and took care of it.’ ”