Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/72

to jot down anything of philosophy, poetry, or history which arrested his attention strongly. This was not done so much to preserve it, as to fix the thought embodied or fact narrated firmly in his memory. After writing it he would study it, then lay it aside for a time, then recur to it; if, on consideration and reconsideration, it struck him as superlatively valuable, he would try to retain it. And he had unused sheets of paper, copybooks, fly-leaves of books, etc., on which he preserved these memoranda, sticking them in out-of-the-way places. Books were rare and scarce in the days of his youth. Thomas Lincoln owned literally none but the Bible. His illustrious son's early acquaintance with any literature beyond the domain of primary schoolbooks was derived from those which he could borrow from neighbors. The sources of supply, however, were of an extremely attenuated character. A neighbor named Josiah Crawford possessed a copy of Weems's "Washington," a highly spiced, mendacious, and stupid string of anecdotes of the early days in Virginia and elsewhere, euphemistically termed "a Life of Washington." Abraham readily borrowed it, and read and studied it of evenings. One night it was ruined by rain, and Lincoln at once sought the lender, and reported the loss, and the superfluous fact that he had not the wherewithal to pay. An agreement was therefore made that young Abe should pull fodder for three days in repayment. There does not appear anything out of the way in all this; wages were very low then and books very rare; there was no bookstore nearer than Louisville, and the loss of a needed book in that neighborhood was well-nigh irreparable. It is even