Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/312

 250 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS learned all that the half-educated backwoods teachers could impart ; and besides this he read over and over all the books he could find. He practised constantly the rules of arithmetic, which he had acquired at school, and began, even in his early childhood, to put in writing his recollections of what he had read and his impressions of what he saw about him. By the time he was nineteen years of age he had acquired a remarkably clear and service able handwriting, and showed sufficient business capacity to be intrusted with a cargo of farm products, which he took to New Orleans and sold. In 1830 his father emigrated once more, to Macon County, 111. Lincoln had by this time attained his extraordinary stature of six feet four inches, and with it enormous muscular strength, w r hich was at once put at the disposal of his father in building his cabin, clearing the field, and splitting from the walnut forests, which were plentiful in that county, the rails with which the farm was fenced. Thomas Lincoln, however, soon deserted this new home, his last migration being to Goose Nest Prairie, in Coles County, where he died in 1851, seventy-three years of age. In his last days he was tenderly cared for by his son. Abraham Lincoln left his father s house as soon as the farm was fenced and cleared, hired himself to a man named Denton Offutt, in Sangamon County, assisted him to build a flat-boat, accompa-