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Rh would teach school for two or three weeks. The people were too poor to pay him for teaching longer. The name of this schoolmaster was Zachariah Riney.

The young people for miles around flocked to the school. Most of them were boys and girls, and a few were grown-up young men. The only little child was Abraham Lincoln, and he was not yet five years old. There was only one book studied at the school, and it was a spelling book. It had some easy reading lessons at the end, but these were not to be read until after every word in the book had been spelled. You can imagine how the big boys and girls felt when Abraham Lincoln proved that he could spell and read better than any of them.



[The following poem, written by William Knox, a Scottish poet of considerable talent, has been widely published. It was a great favorite with President Lincoln, by whom it was often recited.]