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.
OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?
[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.]
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift, fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.
The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant's affection who proved,
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn,
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.
The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman who climed with his goats to the steep,
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure—her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
So the multitude goes, like the flower or ’the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold.
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream and view the same sun
And run the same course our fathers have run.
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling,
But it speeds for us all like a bird on the wing.
