In those days schools were very scarce and poor; the teachers were usually incompetent itinerant adventurers or men too lazy or feeble to do the manual labor required of frontiersmen. They were paid a trifling fee for each scholar and "boarded 'round." Nothing was expected of them in the way of education beyond a knowledge of the three R's, and Lincoln, of all famous self-made men, owed the least of his intellectual strength and knowledge to teachers and books and the most to observation and human contact. When he was upon his eventful "speaking trip," as he called it, in New England, in the spring of 1860, a clergyman of Hartford was so impressed by the language and logic of his address that he inquired where he was educated. Mr. Lincoln replied,—
"Well, as to education, the newspapers are correct. I never went to school more than six months in my life. I can say this: that among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way that I could not understand. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.
"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over again, until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, until I have bounded it north and bounded it south and bounded it east and bounded it west."
Among the papers of the late Charles Lanman there is a sketch of Mr. Lincoln, written in his own hand. Mr. Lanman was editor of the Congressional Directory at the time that Mr. Lincoln was elected to Congress, and, according to the ordinary custom, forwarded to him, as well as to all the other members-elect, a blank to be filled out with facts and dates which might be made the basis for a biographical sketch in the Directory. Lincoln's blank was returned promptly filled up in his own handwriting, with the following information:
"Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
"Education defective.
"Profession, lawyer.
"Military service, captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk War.
"Offices held: postmaster at a very small office; four times a member of the Illinois Legislature, and elected to the Lower House of the next Congress."
Mr. Leonard Swett, who was closely identified with Mr. Lincoln for many years, says,—