"I DID IT!" There was a buck's head nailed over the school house door. It proved a temptation to young Lincoln, who was tall enough to reach it easily. One day the schoolmaster discovered that one horn was broken and he demanded to know who had done the damage. There was silence and a general denial till Abe spoke up sturdily: "I did it. I did not mean to do it, but I hung on it--and it broke!" The other boys thought Abe was foolish to "own up" till he had to--but that was his way. It is doubtful if Abe Lincoln owned an arithmetic. He had a copybook, made by himself, in which he entered tables of weights and measures and "sums" he had to do. Among these was a specimen of schoolboy doggerel: "Abraham Lincoln, His hand and pen, He will be good-- But God knows when!" In another place he wrote some solemn reflections on the value of time: "Time, what an empty vapor 'tis, And days, how swift they are! Swift as an Indian arrow-- Fly on like a shooting star. The present moment, just, is here, Then slides away in haste, That we can never say they're ours, But only say they're past." As he grew older his handwriting improved and he was often asked to "set copies" for other boys to follow. In the book of a boy named Richardson, he wrote this prophetic couplet: "Good boys who to their books apply Will all be great men by and by." A "MOTHER'S BOY"--HIS FOOD AND CLOTHING Dennis Hanks related of his young companion: "As far as food and clothing were concerned, the boy had plenty--such as it was--'corndodgers,' bacon and game, some fish and wild fruits. We had very little wheat flour. The nearest mill was eighteen miles. A hoss mill it was, with a plug (old horse) pullin' a beam around; and Abe used to say his dog could stand and eat the flour as fast as it was made, _and then be ready for supper_! "For clothing he had jeans. He was grown before he wore all-wool pants. It was a new country, and he was a raw boy, rather a bright and likely lad; but the big world seemed far ahead of him. We were all slow-goin' folks. But he had the stuff of greatness in him. He got his rare sense and sterling principles from both parents. But Abe's kindliness, humor, love of humanity, hatred of slavery, all came from his mother. I am free to say Abe was a 'mother's boy.'"