The child had enjoyed a little irregular schooling while living in Kentucky, getting what instruction was possible of one Zachariah Birney, a Catholic, who taught for a time close by his father’s house.  He also attended, as convenience permitted, a school kept by Caleb Hazel, nearly four miles away, walking the distance back and forth with his sister.  Soon after coming under the care of his step-mother, the lad was afforded some similar opportunities for learning.  His first master in Indiana was Azel Dorsey.  The sort of education dispensed by him, and the circumstances under which it was given, are described by Mr. Ward H. Lamon, at one time Lincoln’s law-partner at Springfield, Illinois.  “Azel Dorsey presided in a small house near the Little Pigeon Creek meeting-house, a mile and a half from the Lincoln cabin.  It was built of unhewn logs, and had holes for windows, in which greased paper served for glass.  The roof was just high enough for a man to stand erect.  Here the boy was taught reading, writing, and ciphering.  They spelt in classes, and ‘trapped’ up and down.  These juvenile contests were very exciting to the participants, and it is said by the survivors that Abe was even then the equal, if not the superior, of any scholar in his class.  The next teacher was Andrew Crawford.  Mrs. Gentry says he began teaching in the neighborhood in the winter of 1822-3.  Crawford ’kept school’ in the same little school-house which had been the scene of Dorsey’s labors, and the windows were still adorned with the greased leaves of old copybooks that had come down from Dorsey’s time.  Abe was now in his fifteenth year, and began to exhibit symptoms of gallantry toward the other sex.  He was growing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full height of six feet and four inches.  He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt, and a cap made of the skin of a ’possum or a coon.  The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs, and failed by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes.  He would always come to school thus, good-humoredly and laughing.  He was always in good health, never sick, had an excellent constitution and took care of it.”

Crawford taught “manners”—­a feature of backwoods education to which Dorsey had not aspired.  Crawford had doubtless introduced it as a refinement which would put to shame the humble efforts of his predecessor.  One of the scholars was required to retire, and then to re-enter the room as a polite gentleman is supposed to enter a drawing-room.  He was received at the door by another scholar and conducted from bench to bench until he had been introduced to all the young ladies and gentlemen in the room.  Lincoln went through the ordeal countless times.  If he took a serious view of the performance it must have put him to exquisite torture, for he was conscious that he was not a perfect type of manly beauty.  If, however, it struck him as at all funny, it must have filled him with unspeakable mirth to be thus gravely led about, angular and gawky, under the eyes of the precise Crawford, to be introduced to the boys and girls of his acquaintance.