"How big is your trunk?" Page 88.
Mr. Lincoln had a big heart. It never bothered him to stop long enough to do a kindness. One bitterly cold day he saw an old man chopping wood. He was feeble and was shaking with the cold. Mr. Lincoln watched him for a few minutes and then asked him how much he was to be paid for the whole lot. "One dollar," he answered, "and I need it to buy shoes." "I should think you did," said the lawyer, noticing that the poor old man's toes showed through the holes of those he was wearing. Then he gently took the axe from the man's hands and said: "You go in by the fire and keep warm, and I'll do the wood." Mr. Lincoln made the chips fly. He chopped so fast that the passers-by never stopped talking about it.
Abraham Lincoln was known to be honest, unselfish, and clear-headed. He had grown very wise by much reading and study. Finally the people of the United States paid him the greatest honor that can come to an American. They made him President. Yes, this man who had taught himself to write in the Kentucky log cabin was President of the United States!
As President, Mr. Lincoln lived in style at the White House. But he was just the same quiet, modest man that he had always been. He was busier, that was all.
When President Lincoln spoke to the people, or sent letters (messages, they are called) to Congress, every one said: "What a brain that man has!" But he used very short, simple words. Once he gave a reason for this. He said it used to make him angry, when he was a child, to hear the neighbors talk to his father in a way that he could not understand. He would lie awake, sometimes, half the night, trying to think what they meant. When he thought he had at last got the idea, he would put it into the simplest words he knew, so that any boy would know what was meant. This got to be a habit, and even in his great talk at Gettysburg the beautiful words are short and plain.
One day when Lincoln was running the ferry-boat for the man I have spoken of before, he saw at one of the river landings some negro slaves getting a terrible beating by their master. He was only a boy, but he never forgot the sight, and one of the things he brought about when he became President of the United States was the freedom of the black people.
There are a great many lives and stories about Lincoln which you will read and enjoy, and it is certain that the more you know of this great man, Dear "Honest Abe," the better you will love him.