When Abraham was thirteen years old,the people in the Pigeon

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X.NOT MUCH SCHOOLING,AND YET A LITTLE
When Abraham was thirteen years old,the people in
the Pigeon Creek settlement decided to build a schoolhouse.
It would not do,they said,to let their children grow up
in ignorance.One morning in autumn,when the crops
had been " laid by," and there was a lull in the
work on the farms,all the men met together at
the crossroads,where a plot of ground had been given for
school purposes.Axes rang in the woods,trees crashed
to the ground,logs were cut in proper lengths and laid one
above another — and before nightfall the schoolhouse was
finished.
It was much like any other log cabin.The door was
at one end; and on either side there was a small square
window.Nearly the whole of the other end was taken up
by the fireplace — a huge affair,built of blue clay and flat
stones.Benches made of logs split in halves were placed
around the inside of the room for seats.A rude shelf was
put up near the door to serve as a desk,before which the
few pupils who wished to study writing could stand by
turns and trace their copies.Of course there was no floor.
There was no glass in the windows,but it was expected
that when the weather grew cold the master would paste
a sheet of greased paper over each opening — and this
would serve just as well.
62 AbraJiam Littcoln
The first master was Azel Dorsey ; and the boys and
girls from the Lincoln cabin were among the pupils.School
began at sunrise and was not dismissed until the sun was
setting.It was scarcely dayhght when the children started
to school,for the house was three or four miles away,and
often the stars were shining before all were back at the
home fireside.The master had agreed to teach spelling,
reading,writing,and arithmetic " to the rule of three "; but
only a few of the scholars studied anything but spelling.
Of course,Abraham Lincoln stood at the head of his
classes,not because he could learn more easily than his
schoolmates,but because he studied harder.He was the
only one who saw that the way to rise in the world is by
hard labor and by getting knowledge.The other boys
cared for nothing so much as being good wrestlers and fast
runners,hard hitters and straight throwers.They looked
with scorn upon book-learning,and would have made things
very unpleasant for Abraham if he had not shown them
that,with all his love for books,he could wrestle and run
and strike and throw as well as the best of them.On the
fly leaf of an arithmetic which he used at about this time,
one may still read these lines written by himself :—
" Abraham Lincoln,
His hand and pea;
He will be good,
But God knows when.'"'
Azel Dorsey's school soon came to an end,and it was
two years before another master was employed to teach in
the little log schoolhouse.But all this while,Abraham
was quietly teaching himself at home ; and it is not
Not Much Schooling,and yet a L ittle 63
likely that any backwoods schoolmaster could have taught
him better.His father thought that it was folly for him
to learn anything more,and that so much reading of
books was a great waste of time.But when Andrew
Crawford at last opened another school in the little cabin,
Mrs.Lincoln declared that the six children should attend
it — and so they did.
It was at this school that Abraham wrote his first com-
position of which we have any account.Its subject was
" Cruelty to Animals," and knowing how gentle-hearted
he was toward all living creatures,we can easily guess
some of the things he said.
The second school was even shorter than the first.The
settlers seemed to think that a very little learning was suffi-
cient,and so it was a long time before the log schoolhouse
again echoed with the voices of children conning their
spelling books.
When Abraham was nearly seventeen years old,a wan-
dering schoolmaster whose name was Swaney,opened a
school in a deserted cabin four and a half miles from the
Lincoln home.Of course young Lincoln was one of the
scholars.He was so anxious to learn,that he thought
nothing of walking nine miles every day to gain what little
he could from a man who knew far less than himself.
But his father soon came forward and declared that the
boy had already had more schooling than was good for
him,and that he must stop all such nonsense and go
to work.And so Abraham Lincoln's school days were
at an end.If all had been put together,they would not
have made a twelvemonth.