While in Crawford’s school the lad wrote his first compositions.  The exercise was not required by the teacher, but, as Nat Grigsby has said, “he took it up on his own account.”  At first he wrote only short sentences against cruelty to animals, but at last came forward with a regular composition on the subject.  He was annoyed and pained by the conduct of the boys who were in the habit of catching terrapins and putting coals of fire on their backs.  “He would chide us,” says Grigsby, “tell us it was wrong, and would write against it.”

One who has had the privilege of looking over some of the boyish possessions of Lincoln says:  “Among the most touching relics which I saw was an old copy-book in which, at the age of fourteen, Lincoln had taught himself to write and cipher.  Scratched in his boyish hand on the first page were these lines: 

Abraham Lincoln his hand and pen. he will be good but god knows When”

The boy’s thirst for learning was not to be satisfied with the meagre knowledge furnished in the miserable schools he was able to attend at long intervals.  His step-mother says:  “He read diligently.  He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that struck him he would write it down on boards, if he had no paper, and keep it until he had got paper.  Then he would copy it, look at it, commit it to memory, and repeat it.  He kept a scrap-book into which he copied everything which particularly pleased him.”  Mr. Arnold further states:  “There were no libraries and but few books in the back settlements in which Lincoln lived.  If by chance he heard of a book that he had not read he would walk miles to borrow it.  Among other volumes borrowed from Crawford was Weems’s Life of Washington.  He read it with great earnestness.  He took it to bed with him in the loft and read till his ‘nubbin’ of candle burned out.  Then he placed the book between the logs of the cabin, that it might be near as soon as it was light enough in the morning to read.  In the night a heavy rain came up and he awoke to find his book wet through and through.  Drying it as well as he could, he went to Crawford and told him of the mishap.  As he had no money to pay for the injured book, he offered to work out the value of it.  Crawford fixed the price at three days’ work, and the future President pulled corn for three days, thus becoming owner of the coveted volume.”  In addition to this, he was fortunate enough to get hold of AEsop’s Fables, Pilgrim’s Progress, and the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Clay.  He made these books his own by conning them over and over, copying the more impressive portions until they were firmly fixed in his memory.  Commenting upon the value of this sort of mental training, Dr. Holland wisely remarks:  “Those who have witnessed the dissipating effect of many books upon the minds of modern children do not find it hard to believe that Abraham Lincoln’s poverty of books was the wealth of his life.  The few he had did much to perfect the teaching which his mother had begun, and to form a character which for quaint simplicity, earnestness, truthfulness, and purity, has never been surpassed among the historic personages of the world.”