CHAPTER III

OPPORTUNITY

IF you just get a chance?

Oh, certainly, it would be unfair for us grown-ups to expect you, a mere inexperienced youth, to win without giving you a fair opportunity.

But what is a fair opportunity?

Opinions regarding what is best for the making of a boy differ greatly. Some assert that a child born with a silver spoon in its mouth is not likely to breathe as deeply and develop as well as one that is born without any such hindrance to full respiration.

Kind parents, a good home training, a chance to go to school, influential friends, good health, and some one to stand between you and the hard knocks of the world all serve to make a boy's surroundings truly enviable. Under such conditions any boy ought to win. Yet some boys have won without these advantages. Abraham Lincoln was born of very

The two noblest things are sweetness and light. SWIFT.

The wise prove, and the foolish confess, by their conduct, that a life of employment is the only life

PALEY.

poor parents in a very crude cabin. Some years later the family passed through a long, cold, Indiana winter with no shelter but a shed built of poles, open on one side to the frosts and snows. Even when a cabin took the place of this rude "camp" it was left several years, we are told, without floor, doors or windows. His biographers inform us that here in the primeval forest Abraham Lincoln spent his boyhood. His bed of leaves was raised from the ground by poles, resting upon one side in the interstices of the logs of which the hut was built, and upon the other in crotches of sticks driven into the earth. The skins of animals afforded almost the

worth leading. only covering allowed this truly miserable family. Their food was of the simplest and coarsest variety and very scarce. Here Mrs. Lincoln died when Abraham was nine years old, and her lifeless form was placed in a rude coffin which Abraham's father made with his own hands. The grave was dug in a cleared space in the forest and there Nancy Hanks Lincoln was buried. Many months passed before it was practicable to secure a preacher who, when he came, gathered the family about him in the woods and

The world belongs to the energetic. EMERSON.

He who hurts others injures himself; he who helps others advances his own interests.-BUDDHA.

spoke a few words over the mound of sod.
When fame had come, Mr. Lincoln used
to say that he never attended school for
more than six months in all his life-in no
spirit of boastfulness, however, like many
a self-made American, but with a regret
that was deeply felt. While a boy he
worked out his sums on the logs and clap-
boards of the little cabin, evincing the
fondness for mathematics that remained
with him through life. But even amid
his dark isolation some light found its
way to his slowly expanding mind. He
got hold of a copy of "Aesop's Fables,"
read "Robinson Crusoe" and borrowed
Weems's "Life of Washington," filling
his mind with the story of that noble
character. One night after he had
climbed up the pegs, which served as a
ladder to reach his cot, which in the more
finished condition of the cabin had been
placed in the attic, he hid the book under
the rafters. The rain which came in be-
fore morning soaked the leaves so that he
was compelled to go to the farmer from
whom he had borrowed the book and
offer to make good the loss. That un-
philanthropic neighbor exacted as its SEWArd.
price three days' work in the corn-field,

He that sips of many arts drinks of none.— FULLER.

There is a higher law than the constitution. WILLIAM H.