He was ten years old at this time, and had been to school but little.  Indeed, he says himself that he only went to school “by littles,” and that all his schooling “did not amount to more than a year.”  But he had learned to read when he was a mere baby at his mother’s knee; and to a boy who loved knowledge as he did, this furnished the key to a broad education.  His love of reading amounted to a passion.  The books he had access to when a boy were very few; but they were good ones, and he knew them literally from cover to cover.  They were the Bible, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a “History of the United States,” and Weems’s “Life of Washington.”  Some of these were borrowed, among them the “Life of Washington,” of which Abraham afterward became the happy owner.  The story of how he became its owner has often been told.

The book had been loaned to him by a neighbor, a well-to-do farmer named Crawford.  After reading from it late into the night by the light of pine knots, Abraham carried it to his bedroom in the loft.  He placed it in a crack between the logs over his bed of dry leaves, so that he could reach to it as soon as the first streaks of dawn penetrated through the chinks in the log cabin.  Unfortunately, it rained heavily during the night, and when he took down the precious volume in the morning, he found it badly damaged, all soddened and stained by the rain.  He was much distressed, and hurried to the owner of the book as soon as possible to explain the mishap.

“I’m real sorry, Mr. Crawford,” he said, in concluding his explanation, “and want to fix it up with you somehow, if you can tell me any way, for I ain’t got the money to pay for it with.”

“Well,” said Mr. Crawford, “being as it’s you, Abe, I won’t be hard on you.  Come over and shuck corn three days, and the book’s yours.”

The boy was delighted with the result of what at first had seemed a great misfortune.  Verily, his sorrow was turned into joy.  What!  Shuck corn only three days and become owner of the book that told all about his greatest hero!  What an unexpected piece of good fortune!

Lincoln’s reading had revealed to him a world beyond his home in the wilderness.  Slowly it dawned upon him that one day he might find his place in that great world, and he resolved to prepare himself with all his might for whatever the future might hold.

“I don’t intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like always,” he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading the “Life of Washington.”  “I’m going to fit myself for a profession.”

“Why, what do you want to be now?” asked Mrs. Crawford, in surprise.  “Oh, I’ll be president,” said the boy, with a smile.

“You’d make a pretty president, with all your tricks and jokes, now wouldn’t you?” said Mrs. Crawford.

“Oh, I’ll study and get ready,” was the reply, “and then maybe the chance will come.”

If the life of George Washington, who had all the advantages of culture and training that his time afforded, was an inspiration to Lincoln, the poor hard-working backwoods boy, what should the life of Lincoln be to boys of to-day?  Here is a further glimpse of the way in which he prepared himself to be president of the United States.  The quotation is from Ida M. Tarbell’s “Life of Lincoln.”