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.''
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