man in the country. He could do more work, too, for he was tall and strong. He would not quarrel, and he made other men stop fighting. Everyone laughed at his funny stories. They wondered at his wise talk. He was so honest that he was called "Honest Abe." Now you know who he was. He was our great president, Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln wanted to see the world. He went down the Ohio River, and on down the Mississippi River. He had no money for travelling. He went as a deck hand on a river boat. He saw the towns along the rivers, and the big, warm, French city of New Orleans. For a long time he thought he would learn to be a pilot, to guide boats safely on the big river.
When he was twenty-one Lincoln's father moved again. They went west into Illinois. They moved in covered wagons drawn by oxen. They drove for two hundred miles, through woods, across swamps and over the grassy prairies. The new home was built on a river bank. Lincoln helped his father build a cabin. He split rails to make a fence around the corn field. Then he left home to make his own way in the world. The women cried to see him go. The men gripped his big hand. They all loved him.
He went to clerk in a village store. It was a big, busy town of thirty log houses. The school teacher taught Lincoln grammar. He studied law by himself. He had no money to buy books. In a larger town, twenty miles away, were lawyers. They loaned law books to Lincoln. Still, he had to work for a living. He was a storekeeper and postmaster. He split rails, and he measured land, to mark off farms and roads. There were six years of hard work, and lonely study, before he had learned enough to be a lawyer. Then he went away from the village to the state capital to live. More than twenty years later, when our country needed a brave, honest, wise man for a leader, in troubled times, it turned to this Western pioneer lawyer.
Thousands of boys were born in just such cabins in the woods. Thousands grew up into good and useful men. They made farms. They built towns and railroads. They were our great grandfathers. We are proud of them. But we are proudest of all of Lincoln. And we are proud of the worn-out mothers, who died so long ago of the hardships of pioneer days. If our great grandmothers could just have lived to know what men they gave to the world! See Lincoln, Abraham, page 1073.
