Let us glance now at the first half of the brief life of which this was the glorious and happy consummation.  Nothing could be more squalid and miserable than the home in which Abraham Lincoln was born—­a one-roomed cabin without floor or window in what was then the wilderness of Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier life which swiftly moved westward from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, always in advance of schools and churches, of books and money, of railroads and newspapers, of all things which are generally regarded as the comforts and even necessaries of life.  His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless, content if he could keep soul and body together for himself and his family, was ever seeking, without success, to better his unhappy condition by moving on from one such scene of dreary desolation to another.  The rude society which surrounded them was not much better.  The struggle for existence was hard, and absorbed all their energies.  They were fighting the forest, the wild beast, and the retreating savage.  From the time when he could barely handle tools until he attained his majority, Lincoln’s life was that of a simple farm laborer, poorly clad, housed, and fed, at work either on his father’s wretched farm or hired out to neighboring farmers.  But in spite, or perhaps by means, of this rude environment, he grew to be a stalwart giant, reaching six feet four at nineteen, and fabulous stories are told of his feats of strength.  With the growth of this mighty frame began that strange education which in his ripening years was to qualify him for the great destiny that awaited him, and the development of those mental faculties and moral endowments which, by the time he reached middle life, were to make him the sagacious, patient, and triumphant leader of a great nation in the crisis of its fate.  His whole schooling, obtained during such odd times as could be spared from grinding labor, did not amount in all to as much as one year, and the quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible grade, including only the elements of reading, writing, and ciphering.  But out of these simple elements, when rightly used by the right man, education is achieved, and Lincoln knew how to use them.  As so often happens, he seemed to take warning from his father’s unfortunate example.  Untiring industry, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an ever-growing desire to rise above his surroundings, were early manifestations of his character.

Books were almost unknown in that community, but the Bible was in every house, and somehow or other Pilgrim’s Progress, AEsop’s Fables, a History of the United States, and a Life of Washington fell into his hands.  He trudged on foot many miles through the wilderness to borrow an English Grammar, and is said to have devoured greedily the contents of the Statutes of Indiana that fell in his way.  These few volumes he read and reread—­and his power of assimilation was great.  To be shut in with a few books and