trait.  These things seem not to have been done spontaneously, but on mature reflection after he had passed unheeding by.  He grew to be a man of prompt action in circumstances of certain kinds; but generally his impulse was slow and not very sure.  Taste and the minor sensibilities were a little deficient in him.  As a lady once candidly explained to him, he was not ready with little gracious acts.  But rare occasions, such as can arouse a passionate sense of justice, would kindle his slow, kind nature with a sudden fire.

The total amount of his schooling, at the several brief periods for which there happened to have been a school accessible and facility to get to it, was afterwards computed by himself at something under twelve months.  With this slight help distributed over the years from his eighth to his fifteenth birthday he taught himself to read, write, and do sums.  The stories of the effort and painful shifts, by which great men accomplish this initial labour almost unhelped, have in all cases the same pathos, and have a certain sameness in detail.  Having learnt to read he had the following books within his reach:  the Bible, “Aesop’s Fables,” “Robinson Crusoe,” the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a “History of the United States,” and Weems’ “Life of Washington.”  Later on the fancy took him to learn the laws of his State, and he obtained the “Laws of Indiana.”  These books he did read, and read again, and pondered, not with any dreamy or purely intellectual interest, but like one who desires the weapon of learning for practical ends, and desires also to have patterns of what life should be.  As already said, his service as a labourer could be considerable, and when something stirred his ambition to do a task quickly his energy could be prodigious.  But “bone idle is what I called him,” was the verdict long after of one, perhaps too critical, employer.  “I found him,” he said, “cocked up on a haystack with a book.  ‘What are you reading?’ I said.  ’I’m not reading, I’m studying,’ says he.  ‘What are you studying?’ says I.  ‘Law,’ says he, as proud as Cicero.  ‘Great God Almighty!’ said I.”  The boy’s correction, “studying” for “reading,” was impertinent, but probably sound.  To be equally sound, we must reckon among his educational facilities the abundant stories which came his way in a community which, however unlettered, was certainly not dull-spirited; the occasional newspaper; the rare lectures or political meetings; the much more frequent religious meetings, with preachers who taught a grim doctrine, but who preached with vigour and sometimes with the deepest sincerity; the hymns often of great emotional power over a simple congregation—­Cowper’s “There is a fountain filled with blood,” is one recorded favourite among them; the songs, far other than hymns, which Dennis Hanks and his other mates would pick up or compose; and the practice in rhetoric and the art of exposition, which he unblushingly afforded himself before audiences of fellow labourers