If we could see him as he started off with his gun, or as he chopped wood for the fires, we should doubtless find his dress somewhat peculiar. He was a tall, slim, awkward boy, with very long legs and arms. In winter he wore moccasins, trousers, and shirt of deerskin, and a cap of coonskin with the tail of the animal hanging down behind so as to serve both as ornament and convenience in handling the cap. On a cold winter day, such a furry costume might look very comfortable if close-fitting, but we are told that Abe's deerskin trousers, after getting wet, shrunk so much that they became several inches too short for his long, lean legs. As for stockings, he tells us he never wore them until he was "a young man grown." But although this costume seems to us singular, it did not appear so to his neighbors and friends, for they were used to seeing boys dressed in that manner. The frontiersmen were obliged to devise many contrivances to supply their lack of manufactured things. For instance, they all used thorns for pins, bits of stone for buttons, and home-made soap and tallow-dipped candles. Candles, indeed, were a luxury much of the time, and in Abe's boyhood, he was obliged in the long winter evenings to read by the light of the wood fire blazing in the rude fireplace of the log cabin. [Illustration: Lincoln Studying.] Great as had been his privations in this Indiana home, Abe had now to suffer a more grievous loss in the death of his mother. The rough life of the forest and the exposure of the open cabin had been too much for her delicate constitution. Before she died she said to her boy: "Abraham, I am going away from you, and you will never see me again. I know that you will always be good and kind to your sister and father. Try to live as I have taught you, and to love your Heavenly Father." Many years later Lincoln said, "All that I am, or I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." A year after this sad event, his father brought home a second wife, who became a devoted friend to the motherless boy. Energetic, thrifty, and intelligent, this woman, who had been accustomed to better things than she found in her new home, insisted that the log cabin should be supplied with a door, a floor, and windows, and she at once began to make the children "look a little more human." Abraham Lincoln's schooling was brief--not more than a year in all. Such schools as he attended were nothing like the graded schools of to-day. The buildings were rough log cabins with the earth for floor and oiled paper for windows. Desks were unknown, the little school-house being furnished with rude benches made of split logs, after the manner of the stools and tables in the Lincoln home. The teachers were ignorant men, who taught the children a little spelling, reading, writing, and ciphering. While attending the last school, Abe had to go daily a distance of four and a half miles from his home.