who had learning enough to furnish the literature for such occasions."

"At Gentryville 'they had exhibitions or speaking meetings.' Some of the questions they spoke on were, The Bee and the Ant, Water and Fire; another was, Which had the most right to complain, the Negro or the Indian."

"One William Wood, a boyhood friend of Abe's, says that 'Abe was in the habit of carrying (his pieces) to him for criticism and encouragement. Mr. Wood took at least two newspapers, one of them devoted to politics and one of them to temperance. Abe borrowed them both and read them faithfully over and over again, was inspired with an ardent desire to write something on the subjects of which they treated. He accordingly composed an article on Temperance, which Mr. Wood thought excelled for sound sense anything that the paper contained. Abe then tried his hand on national politics, saying that the American government was the best form of government for an intelligent people; that it ought to be kept sound and preserved forever; that general education should be fostered and carried all over the country; that the constitution should be saved, the Union perpetuated and the laws revered, respected and enforced. This article was turned over to Mr. Wood. Judge Pritchard afterwards passed that way, read the article, and said 'The world can't beat it.' It was afterwards published in some local paper."

This was written when the boy was but seventeen years of age.

On Monday mornings he would mount a stump and deliver in substance the sermon that he had heard the day before. His taste for public speaking seemed not

only natural but was most pronounced at a very early age. His stepsister Matilda Johnston says:

"He was an indefatigable preacher. When Father and Mother would go to church Abe would take down the Bible, read a verse, give out a hymn and we would sing. Abe was then about fifteen years of age. He preached and we would do the crying. Sometimes he would join in the chorus of tears. One day my brother, John Johnston, threw a land terrapin against a tree and crushed the shell. It suffered much. Abe then preached against cruelty to animals contending that an ant's life was as sweet to it as ours to us."

After reaching New Salem, when twenty-two years of age, one of the first things he did was to join the "New Salem Literary Society." The president, Mr. R. B. Rutledge spoke of Lincoln's debates as follows: "He pursued the questions with reason and argument so pithy and forcible that all were amazed.”

While here he frequently walked to Booneville court-house to observe and study the trial of cases.

It was at New Salem within a week from his arrival that he met the village schoolmaster, Mentor Graham, who exercised a most wholesome and intellectual influence on the young man, not only giving him books to study, but aiding him in their study, and strongly advising him to study grammar. Lincoln walked six miles to borrow a copy of Kirkham's grammar and with Graham's help he succeeded in mastering it in six weeks. His comment was that if that was science he thought he could "subdue" another.

Herndon, at page 112, quotes the schoolmaster Graham as saying:

"He (Lincoln) studied to see the subject-matter clearly, and to express it truly and strongly. I have

known him to study for hours the best way of three to express an idea."

The fact of the matter is he was one of the busiest boys in all the neighborhood, with his quills, pokeberry juice, scraps of paper, charcoal and shingles, scrapbooks, compositions, debate, talking from stumps to the trees as an audience, reading and repeating over and over again until he had memorized the contents, of books, sermons, and speeches, and could reproduce them verbatim.

Mental power does not come from mere knowledge, but rather in the ability to practically use that knowledge. As child and youth he was constantly engaged not only in acquiring knowledge, but in arranging the same and putting it in appropriate phrase and formula for future use.

Our public schools and colleges seem to neglect this important and useful branch of practical education and mental discipline. I fear the essentials of the old literary society have come and gone until public opinion shall call them back.

It was one of the biggest factors in the intellectual product of this man. He was organizing and attending literary societies, participating in what he called "practising polemics" in and about Gentryville, in and about New Salem, and even after he got to Springfield as a member of the State Legislature, he, with others, organized a Lyceum, in the autumn of 1836, and delivered before that organization in January, 1837, a remarkable speech on "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions." This speech will be discussed in a later chapter.

Lincoln was not a man of ordinary desires, ordinary tastes, ordinary likes and dislikes. He was, for the

most part, extraordinary in these respects. He had passions for things, and no passion of his life was stronger than his passion for knowledge-save one. What was that one? His passion for justice.

These two passions were ever present and prevailing throughout his personal and public life.

CHAPTER IV

HIS PASSION FOR JUSTICE

'And behold there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he was a good man and a just."-St. Luke 23: 50.

JUSTICE, as here used is the broad generic word and its associated attributes, such as gentleness, helpfulness, gratitude, truthfulness, honesty, and the liketo every man his due.

It embraces those qualities of character, which the world admires when it pays tribute to a just man.

As we have already seen, Lincoln while unschooled, as a boy, was everything but uneducated. Where in all Indiana could he have found a schoolmaster as great as himself? Where could he have found a school that could have given the time to study, to repetition in repeating over and over again his reading and writing, where could he have found a school with such text-books as the Bible, Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," "Æsop's Fables," DeFoe's "Robinson Crusoe," and the like?

Just as he was without the opportunity of regular attendance upon the day-school, so he was also without the opportunity of attendance upon Sunday-school and upon church and Bible class. And yet there was no book to which he devoted so much time, study, analysis and application of its great truths as he did to the Bible.

As Herndon has well said: "This book was nearly always at his elbow."

Its parables and proverbs furnished a plan and spec