[Footnote 4: AEsop (E'sop): the name of a noted writer of fables. Here is one of AEsop's fables: An old frog thought that he could blow himself up to be as big as an ox. So he drew in his breath and puffed himself out prodigiously. "Am I big enough now?" he asked his son. "No," said his son; "you don't begin to be as big as an ox yet." Then he tried again, and swelled himself out still more. "How's that?" he asked. "Oh, it's no use trying," said his son, "you can't do it." "But I will," said the old frog. With that he drew in his breath with all his might and puffed himself up to such an enormous size that he suddenly burst. Moral: Don't try to be bigger than you can.] 248. What Lincoln could do at seventeen; what he was at nineteen; his strength.--By the time the lad was seventeen he could write a good hand, do hard examples in long division, and spell better than any one else in the county. Once in a while he wrote a little piece of his own about something which interested him; when the neighbors heard it read, they would say, "The world can't beat it." At nineteen Abraham Lincoln had reached his full height. He stood nearly six feet four inches, barefooted. He was a kind of good-natured giant. No one in the neighborhood could strike an axe as deep into a tree as he could, and few, if any, were equal to him in strength. It takes a powerful man to put a barrel of flour into a wagon without help, and there is not one in a hundred who can lift a barrel of cider off the ground; but it is said that young Lincoln could stoop down, lift a barrel on to his knees, and drink from the bung-hole. 249. Young Lincoln makes a voyage to New Orleans; how he handled the robbers.--At this time a neighbor hired Abraham to go with his son to New Orleans. The two young men were to take a flat-boat loaded with corn and other produce down the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was called a voyage of about eighteen hundred miles, and it would take between three and four weeks. [Illustration: LINCOLN ON THE FLAT-BOAT GOING DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.] Young Lincoln was greatly pleased with the thought of making such a trip. He had never been away any distance from home, and, as he told his father, he felt that he wanted to see something more of the world. His father made no objection, but, as he bade his son good by, he said, Take care that in trying to see the world you don't see the bottom of the Mississippi. The two young men managed to get the boat through safely. But one night a gang of negroes came on board, intending to rob them of part of their cargo. Lincoln soon showed the robbers he could handle a club as vigorously as he could an axe, and the rascals, bruised and bleeding, were glad to get off with their lives.