Lincoln, the unknown

LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN • 29tions to the players, and repeating Antony's oration over thedead body of Caesar: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend meyour ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."When he came across a passage that appealed especially tohim, he would chalk it down on a board if he had no paper.Finally he made a crude scrap-book. In this he wrote all hisfavorites, using a buzzard's quill for a pen and pokeberry juicefor ink. He carried the scrap-book with him and studied ituntil he could repeat many long poems and speeches by heart.When he went out in the field to work his book went withhim. While the horses rested at the end of the corn row hesat on the top rail of a fence and studied. At noontime, insteadof sitting down and eating with the rest of the family, he tooka corn-dodger in one hand and a book in the other and, hoistinghis feet higher than his head, lost himself in the lines of print.When court was in session Lincoln would often walk fifteenmiles to the river towns to hear the lawyers argue. Later, whenhe was out working in the fields with other men, he would nowand then drop the grub-hoe or hay-fork, mount a fence, andrepeat the speeches he had heard the lawyers make down atRockport or Boonville. At other times he mimicked the shoutinghard-shell Baptist preachers who held forth in the LittlePigeon Creek church on Sundays.Abe often carried "Quinn's Jests," a joke-book, to the fields;and when he sat astride a log and read parts of it aloud, thewoods resounded with the loud guffaws of his audience; butthe weeds throve in the corn rows and the wheat yellowed inthe fields.The farmers who were hiring Lincoln complained that he waslazy, "awful lazy." He admitted it. "My father taught me towork," he said, "but he never taught me to love it."Old Tom Lincoln issued peremptory orders: all this foolishnesshad to stop. But it didn't stop; Abe kept on telling his jokesand making his speeches. One day—in the presence of others—the old man struck him a blow in the face and knocked himdown. The boy wept, but he said nothing. There was alreadygrowing up between father and son an estrangement that wouldlast for the rest of their lives. Although Lincoln looked after hisfather financially in his old age, yet when the old man lay on hisdeath-bed, in 1851, the son did not go to see him, "If we metnow," he said, "it is doubtful whether it would not be morepainful than pleasant."