This is the real Abraham Lincoln, who read, and read, and read; whose constant spells of brooding abstraction, eyes fixed, dreaming face, gave him a reputation for laziness among some of his shallow fellows; who would crouch down in the forest or sit on a fence-rail for hours to study a book; who would lie on his stomach at night in front of the fireplace and, having no paper or slate, would write and cipher with charcoal on the wooden shovel, on boards and the hewn sides of logs, shaving them clean when he wanted to write again. Here is his cousin’s picture of him at the age of fourteen: “When Abe and I returned to the house from work he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn bread, sit down, take a book, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read. We grubbed, plowed, mowed and worked together barefooted in the field. Whenever Abe had a chance in the field while at work, or at the house, he would stop and read.” His principal books were an arithmetic, the Bible, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Robinson Crusoe,” Weems’ “Life of Washington,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and a history of the United States. He became the best speller and penman in his neighborhood. Yet there was a vein of waggery in him which occasionally found a vent in such written verse as this: _Abraham Lincoln, His hand and pen, He will be good, But God knows when._ All this has been told of him many times and in many ways; yet the nation he saved loves to dwell on the picture of the tall, tanned, awkward woodchopper and farm drudge; gawky, angular, iron-muscled, with bare feet or moccasins, deerhide breeches and coonskin cap, battling out in the forest against his own ignorance and, by sheer force of will power, conquering knowledge and commanding destiny. Not a whimper against fate, not a word against youths more successful than himself, no complaint of the hard work and coarse food--simply the strivings of a soul not yet conscious of its own greatness, but already superior to its squalid environments. It is probable that there is not a youth in all America to-day, however poor, ignorant, and forlorn, that has not a better chance to rise in life than Abraham Lincoln had when he started to climb the ladder of light by courage and persistent application.