Masterpieces of Modern Oratory

n words. Answering one who, in 1859, had asked him for some biographic particulars, Lincoln wrote: "I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks. My father (Thomas Lincoln), by the early death of his father, and the very narrow circumstances of his mother, was, even in childhood, a wandering, laboring boy, and grew up literally without education. He never did more in the way of writing than bunglingly to write his own name. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. It was a wild region, with many bears and other animals still in the woods. There were some schools, so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three'. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. " I was raised to farm work till I was twenty-two. At twenty- one I came to Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War and I wa...