In this rough abode the rude and simple furniture was very much like what we have already seen in the cabins of the Tennessee settlers. For chairs there was the same kind of three-legged stools, made by smoothing the flat side of a split log and putting sticks into auger holes underneath. The tables were as simply made, except that they stood on four legs instead of three. The crude bedsteads in the corners of the cabin were made by sticking poles in between the logs at right angles to the wall, the outside corner where the poles met being supported by a crotched stick driven into the ground. Ropes were then stretched from side to side, making a framework upon which shucks and leaves were heaped for bedding, and over all were thrown the skins of wild animals for a covering. Pegs driven into the wall served as a stairway to the loft, where there was another bed of leaves. Here little Abe slept. Abraham Lincoln's schooling was brief--not more than a year in all, and the schools he attended were like those we became acquainted with in the early settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee. During his last school-days he had to go daily a distance of four and one-half miles from his home, with probably no roadway except the deer path through the forest. His midday lunch was a corn dodger, which he carried in his pocket. In spite of this meagre schooling however, the boy, by his self-reliance, resolute purpose, and good reading habits, acquired the very best sort of training for his future life. He had no books at his home, and, of course, there were but few to be had in that wild country from other homes. But among those he read over and over again, while a boy, were the Bible, "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," "A History of the United States," and Weems's "Life of Washington," all books of the right kind. [Illustration: Lincoln Studying by Firelight.] His stepmother said of him: "He read everything 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 before him until he could get paper. Then he would copy it, look at it, commit it to memory, and repeat it." When night came he would find a seat in the corner by the fireside, or stretch out at length on the floor in front of it, and by the firelight write, or work sums in arithmetic, on a wooden shovel, using a charred stick for a pencil. After covering the shovel, he would shave it off and use the surface over again.