It may well have been that Lincoln’s lack of books and the means of learning threw him upon his own resources and led him into those modes of thought, of quaint and apt and logical reasoning, so peculiar to him.  At any rate, it is certain that books can no more make a character like Lincoln than they can make a poet like Shakespeare.

    “By books may Learning sometimes befall,
    But Wisdom never by books at all,”—­

a saying peculiarly true of a man such as Lincoln.

A testimonial to the influence of this early reading upon his childish mind was given by Lincoln himself many years afterwards.  While on his way to Washington to assume the duties of the Presidency he passed through Trenton, New Jersey, and in a speech made in the Senate Chamber at that place he said:  “May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I mention that away back in my childhood, in the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book—­such a one as few of the younger members have seen, Weems’s Life of Washington.  I remember all the accounts there given of the battle-fields and struggles for the liberties of the country; and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton.  The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time, all fixed themselves in my memory more than any single Revolutionary event; and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these early impressions last longer than any others.  I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for.  I am exceedingly anxious that that thing which they struggled for, that something even more than National Independence, that something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world for all time to come, I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people, shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made.”

Another incident in regard to the ruined volume which Lincoln had borrowed from Crawford is related by Mr. Lamon.  “For a long time,” he says, “there was one person in the neighborhood for whom Lincoln felt a decided dislike, and that was Josiah Crawford, who had made him pull fodder for three days to pay for Weems’s Washington.  On that score he was hurt and mad, and declared he would have revenge.  But being a poor boy, a fact of which Crawford had already taken shameful advantage when he extorted three days’ labor, Abe was glad to get work anywhere, and frequently hired out to his old adversary.  His first business in Crawford’s employ was daubing the cabin, which was built of unhewn logs with the bark on.  In the loft of this house, thus finished by his own hands, he slept for many weeks at a time.  He spent his evenings as he did at home,—­writing on wooden shovels or boards with ’a coal, or keel, from the branch.’