Section 8 of 135 - Table of Contents
TRAINING FOR THE PRESIDENCY BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN ``I meant to take good care of your book, Mr. Crawford,'' said the boy, ``but I've damaged it a good deal without intending to, and now I want to make it right with you. What shall I do to make it good?'' ``Why, what happened to it, Abe?'' asked the rich farmer, as he took the copy of Weems's ``Life of Washington'' which he had lent young Lincoln, and looked at the stained leaves and warped binding. ``It looks as if it had been out through all last night's storm. How came you to forget, and leave it out to soak?'' ``It was this way, Mr. Crawford,'' replied Abe. ``I sat up late to read it, and when I went to bed, I put it away carefully in my bookcase, as I call it, a little opening between two logs in the wall of our cabin. I dreamed about General Washington all night. When I woke up I took it out to read a page or two before I did the chores, and you can't imagine how I felt when I found it in this shape. It seems that the mud-daubing had got out of the weather side of that crack, and the rain must have dripped on it three or four hours before I took it out. I'm sorry, Mr. Crawford, and want to fix it up with you, if you can tell me how, for I have not got money to pay for it.'' ``Well,'' said Mr. Crawford, ``come and shuck corn three days, and the book 's yours.'' Had Mr. Crawford told young Abraham Lincoln that he had fallen heir to a fortune the boy could hardly have felt more elated. Shuck corn only three days, and earn the book that told all about his greatest hero! ``I don't intend to shuck corn, split rails, and the like always,'' he told Mrs. Crawford, after he had read the volume. ``I'm going to fit myself for a profession.'' ``Why, what do you want to be, now?'' asked Mrs. Crawford in surprise. ``Oh, I'll be President!'' said Abe with a smile. ``You'd make a pretty President with all your tricks and jokes, now, wouldn't you?'' said the farmer's wife. ``Oh, I'll study and get ready,'' replied the boy, ``and then maybe the chance will come.''Prev Next All
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