HOW TO GET STRONG
and study; but was a martyr to sick-headaches all his life."
And no one looking into his habits of ceaseless over-study will wonder that he had sick-headaches. For he used the means which bring them and neglected the things which prevent them. Naturally strong, he seems to have had no regular—or irregular—habits of exercise, nothing to relieve a congested brain.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865)
Sagacious, patient; dreading praise,—not blame.'"—
"Born in Hardin County, Kentucky, in extreme poverty; His father unable to read or write; unaided by his parents; only a year at school; never for a day master of his time till twenty-one; in the Illinois Legislature at twenty-five; a lawyer at twenty-seven; in Congress at thirty-seven; meeting Stephen A. Douglas in the famous squatter-sovereignty debates; President of the United States at fifty. A many-sided man; he was successively boatman, axeman, hired-laborer, clerk, surveyor, captain, legislator, lawyer, postmaster, orator, politician, statesman, President, and martyr. In youth he read Æsop; Robinson Crusoe; Pilgrim's Progress; a United States history; Weems's Washington; and the Bible; later some philosophy, science, and literature—especially Shakespeare. 'In all the elements that constitute a great lawyer,' said Judge David Davis, of the United States Supreme Court, 'he had few equals.' When he had attacked meanness, fraud, or vice, he was powerful—merciless in denunciation. He said: 'All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel-mother—blessings on her memory.' He used no stimulants—or oaths. In 1864 he said he had never read a novel. Yet he had the capacity of patience beyond any precedent on record. One of his mottoes was, 'Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.'"—Morse's Life of Lincoln.
Fortunately we know a good deal about the body of this great man; of how he trained it; and how it
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