ABRAHAM LINCOLN -- CHAPTER 3

                     THE BIBLE AND AESOP.S FABLES

 

   one day his father came back from a visit to an

acquaintance, with a copy of " the pilgrim's progress".

The book interested Abe very much, but a book which

interested him more was "Aesop's Fables", which was

given to him before long.

  

   He read the Fables over and over again till he could

repeat every line of the book. The Bible and Aesop's

Fables did much to mold his character and life. Some

neighbors said about him," Abe liked reading better than

woking". The fact was that he was ready to work, but

was readier to read and think.

 

   Generally, however, his father kept him working hard,

and hired him out to neighbors when he did not need

him on his own farm. He grew tall and strong,and won a

reputation as the best athlete as well as a good story-

teller.

 

   The two other books that came into his hands within

two years after Aesop's Fables were Ramsay's "life of

Wadhington"s and Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe". Both

books he read eagerly. on December 2,1819, when Abe

was ten, his father returned to Elizabethtown and married

Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow with three children.

 

   She was a kindly, hard-working woman, and brought

order and improvement to the Lincolns. In 1823 a man

named Andrew Crawford opened a school in Spencer

county. Abraham became his pupil and improved in

spelling.

 

   one day a class was spelling, and Crawford told the

pupils to spell the word "defied". No one could spell it

correctly. Then one girl spelled it d-e-f-y-e-d. Just then

she saw Abraham at the window. He pointed his finger

to his eye, smiling good-humoredly. She said afterwards:

" I knew at once that I must change the letter y to an i.

I was right and was allowed to go home".