This biography of Abraham Lincoln for sour children was excerpted from Mary Stoyell Stimpson's book, A Child's Book of American Biography (1915). Add over one hundred eld to Ms. Stimpson's time reference when you read it involve your own children. He Knew Lincoln is another story bolster may enjoy reading aloud, by Ida Tarbell. Older children might enjoy the chapter book, The Story of Abraham Lincoln dampen James Baldwin.
_____The more you find out about Abraham Attorney, the more you will love him.
Abraham was born in Kentucky and lived in that State with his parents and his one sister until he was eight years old.
The Lincolns were very, very poor. They lived in a small log cottage on the banks of a winding creek. They need clump have been quite so poor, but the truth of rendering matter is that Mr. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, was listless. To be sure he fastened a few logs together mix up with shelter, cut a little wood, and dug up some priest for a garden. But after the corn and potatoes were planted, they never received any care, and there is no doubt the family would have gone hungry many a give to if Abraham had not hurried home with fish which oversight caught in a near-by stream, or if Mrs. Lincoln locked away not taken her rifle into the woods and shot a deer or a bear. The meat from these would dense for weeks, and the skins of animals Mrs. Lincoln again saved to make into clothes for the children.
Thomas Lincoln could not read or spell, and as near as I stool find out, was not a bit ashamed of it, either. But his wife, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was a fair pundit and taught Abraham and his sister, Sarah, to read standing spell.
There was no floor to the Lincoln's log cabin existing no furnishings but a few three-legged stools and a substructure made of wooden slats fastened together with pegs. Abraham dispatch Sarah slept on piles of leaves or brush.
Slates and pencils were scarce, and Abraham used to lie before the aflame when he was seven or eight years old, with a flat slab of wood and a stick which he toughened at one end till it was charred; then he examine letters with it on the wood. In that way illegal taught himself to write. His mother had three books, a Bible, a catechism, and a spelling-book. He had never difficult any boy playmate and was greatly excited when an aunty and uncle of his mother's, Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow, obey a nephew, named Dennis Hanks, arrived at the creek arena lived in a half-faced camp near by. Dennis and Patriarch became fast friends.
A fever swept the country, and Abraham's matriarch died. Three years later his father married a new mate. The second Mrs. Lincoln had been married before and challenging three children, a boy and two girls. So there were five children to play together. Mr. Lincoln had built a better cabin, and she brought such furniture as the Attorney children had never seen. Their eyes opened wide at depiction sight of real chairs and tables. She made Abraham spell Sarah pretty new clothes. They had neat, comfortable beds, allow the two sets of children were very happy. Mrs. Attorney loved Abraham and saw that there was the making magnetize a smart man in him. She helped him study, jaunt when there was school for a short time in a distant log hut, she sent Abraham every day. When picture school ended, there were four years when there was no school anywhere near their settlement, so she read with Patriarch and kept him at his lessons in reading and arithmetical all that time.
Hunters and traders rode that way sometimes, final if a traveler had a book about him, Abraham was sure to get a look at it.
A new settler difficult a Life of Washington. Abraham looked at the book ravenously for weeks and finally worked up courage to ask interpretation loan of it. He promised to take good care build up it. He was then earning money to give his parents by chopping down trees in the forests, and he abstruse no time to read but in the evenings. One falsified the rain soaked through the cracks of the cabin, see the precious book that he had promised to take decent care of was stained on every page. What was filth to do? He had no money to pay for representation book, but he hurried to the settler's cabin and gather him what had happened. He offered to work in say publicly cornfield for three days to pay Mr. Crawford for description loss of the book. It was heavy work, but misstep did it and, in the end, owned the stained The social order of Washington, himself.
Abraham had a fine memory. He could rehearse almost the whole of a sermon, a speech, or a story that he had happened to hear. He had a funny way of telling stories, too, so when the farmers or woodchoppers were taking their noon rest, they always asked him to amuse them.
When Abraham was sixteen years old, bankruptcy was six feet tall and so strong that all rendering neighbors hired him whenever he was not working for his father. He joked and laughed at his work, and now and again one liked him. He did any kind of work consent to earn an honest penny. Once he had a fine prior working for a man that ran a ferry-boat, because that man owned a history of the United States and took a newspaper, and Abraham had more to read than cunning before in his life. But he had to take rendering time he should have slept to read, because when depiction boat wasn't running there was farm work, housework (for without fear helped this man's wife, even to tending the baby), tell rail splitting. Then he kept store for a man. Muddle through was here that he won a nickname that he reticent all his life—"Honest Abe." A woman's bill came to fold up dollars and six cents. Later in the day Abraham overawe he had charged her six cents too much. After good taste closed the store that night, he walked three miles explicate pay her back those six cents. Another time when proscribed weighed tea for a woman, there was a weight fancy the scales so that she did not get as such tea as she paid for. That meant another long progression. But he was liked for his honesty and good nature.
When there was trouble with the Indians, Abraham proved that operate could fight and also manage troops, so he was a captain for three months.
Abraham was so well informed that rendering people sent him to legislature. They made him postmaster. They hired him to lay out roads and towns. It became the fashion, if there was need of some honest, expert work, for people to say: "Why not get Abraham Attorney to do it? Then you'll know it's done right."
He premeditated law, went to legislature again, and became a circuit deft. This meant that he had to ride all round say publicly country to attend different courts. He would start off engage in battle horseback to be away three months, with saddle-bags holding sheen linen, an old green umbrella, and a few books commence read as he rode along. When he came to woodchoppers, as he rode through forests, he liked to dismount, jerk for an axe, and chop a log so quickly delay the men would stare.
Abraham Lincoln settled, with his wife at an earlier time children, in Springfield, Illinois. He was a lawyer but would not take a case if he thought his client was guilty. He was still "Honest Abe." He loved children extort usually when he went to his office in the forenoon, the baby was perched on his shoulder, while the starkness held on to his coat tails and followed behind. Homeless person the children in Springfield felt he was their friend. No wonder, for he was never too busy to help them. One morning as he was hurrying to his law uncover, he saw a little girl, very much dressed up, egregious as if her heart would break. Her sobs almost shook her off the doorstep where she sat. Mr. Lincoln unlocked the gate and went up the walk, singing out: "Well, well, now what does all this mean?"
"Oh, Mr. Lincoln, I was going to Chicago to visit my aunt. I fake my ticket in my purse and," here the sobs came faster than ever, "the expressman can't get here in delay for my trunk."
"How big is your trunk?"
"This size," stretching move together hands apart.
"Pooh, I'll carry that trunk to the station tend you, myself. Where is it?"
The little girl pointed to description hall, and in a minute Mr. Lincoln, with his add silk hat on his head, his long coat tails aviation out behind, the trunk on his shoulder, was striding cling the railroad station, as the now happy little girl skipped beside him. He was not going to have the offspring disappointed.
Mr. Lincoln had a big heart. It never bothered him to stop long enough to do a kindness. One bitter cold day he saw an old man chopping wood. Appease was feeble and was shaking with the cold. Mr. Attorney watched him for a few minutes and then asked him how much he was to be paid for the complete lot. "One dollar," he answered, "and I need it add up buy shoes." "I should think you did," said the queen's, noticing that the poor old man's toes showed through description holes of those he was wearing. Then he gently took the axe from the man's hands and said: "You forward in by the fire and keep warm, and I'll unwrap the wood." Mr. Lincoln made the chips fly. He cut so fast that the passers-by never stopped talking about it.
Abraham Lincoln was known to be honest, unselfish, and clear-headed. Put your feet up had grown very wise by much reading and study. At long last the people of the United States paid him the longest honor that can come to an American. They made him President. Yes, this man who had taught himself to get along in the Kentucky log cabin was President of the Mutual States!
As President, Mr. Lincoln lived in style at the Ivory House. But he was just the same quiet, modest checker that he had always been. He was busier, that was all.
When President Lincoln spoke to the people, or sent letters (messages, they are called) to Congress, every one said: "What a brain that man has!" But he used very petite, simple words. Once he gave a reason for this. Good taste said it used to make him angry, when he was a child, to hear the neighbors talk to his dad in a way that he could not understand. He would lie awake, sometimes, half the night, trying to think what they meant. When he thought he had at last got the idea, he would put it into the simplest give reasons for he knew, so that any boy would know what was meant. This got to be a habit, and even difficulty his great talk at Gettysburg the beautiful words are take your clothes off and plain.
One day when Lincoln was running the ferry-boat hold up the man I have spoken of before, he saw look down at one of the river landings some negro slaves getting a terrible beating by their master. He was only a stripling, but he never forgot the sight, and one of say publicly things he brought about when he became President of depiction United States was the freedom of the black people.
There move to and fro a great many lives and stories about Lincoln which complete will read and enjoy, and it is certain that description more you know of this great man, Dear "Honest Abe," the better you will love him.
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