From an early age he did his own thinking and made up his own
mind--invaluable traits in the future President. Paper was such a scarce
commodity that, by the evening firelight, he would write and cipher on
the back of a wooden shovel, and then shave it off to make room for more.
By and by, as he approached manhood, he began speaking in the rude
gatherings of the neighborhood, and so laid the foundation of that art of
persuading his fellow-men which was one rich result of his education, and
one great secret of his subsequent success.
Accustomed as we are in these days of steam and telegraphs to have every
intelligent boy survey the whole world each morning before breakfast, and
inform himself as to what is going on in every nation, it is hardly
possible to conceive how benighted and isolated was the condition of the
community at Pigeon Creek in Indiana, of which the family of Lincoln's
father formed a part, or how eagerly an ambitious and high-spirited boy,
such as he, must have yearned to escape. The first glimpse that he ever
got of any world beyond the narrow confines of his home was in 1828, at
the age of nineteen, when a neighbor employed him to accompany his son
down the river to New Orleans to dispose of a flatboat of produce--a
commission which he discharged with great success.
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