1 He also read at Turnham's house Scott's Lessons and Sindbad the Sailor. Abraham borrowed Weems's "Life of Washington" from his neighbor, old Josiah Crawford,--not Andrew Crawford, the school-teacher, as some of his biographers have it. The "Life" was read with great avidity in the intervals of work, and, when not in use, was carefully deposited on a shelf, made of a clapboard laid on two pins. But just behind the shelf there was a great crack between the logs of the wall; and one night, while Abe was dreaming in the loft, a storm came up, and the rain, blown through the opening, soaked his precious book from cover to cover. Crawford was a sour and churlish fellow at best, and flatly refused to take the damaged book back again. He said, that, if Abe had no money to pay for it, he could work it out. Of course, there was no alternative; and Abe was obliged to discharge the debt by "pulling fodder" three days, at twenty-five cents a day. Crawford afterwards paid dearly for his churlishness. [Illustration: Mrs. Sarah Lincoln, Mother of the President. 061] At home, with his step-mother and the children, he was the most agreeable fellow in the world. "He was always ready to do every thing for everybody." When he was not doing some special act of kindness, he told stories or "cracked jokes." "He was as full of his yarns in Indiana as ever he was in Illinois." Dennis Hanks was a clever hand at the same business, and so was old Tom Lincoln. Among them they must have made things very lively, during the long winter evenings, for John Johnston and the good old lady and the girls.