His side won nearly every spelling match. He was good at
figuring, and he had the best handwriting of anyone at school. Master
Crawford taught reading from the Bible, but he had several other books
from which he read aloud. Among Abe's favorite stories were the ones
about some wise animals that talked. They were by a man named Aesop who
had lived hundreds of years before.
Abe even made up compositions of his own. He called them "sentences."
One day he found some of the boys being cruel to a terrapin, or turtle.
He made them stop. Then he wrote a composition in which he said that
animals had feelings the same as folks.
Sometimes Abe's sentences rhymed. There was one rhyme that the children
thought was a great joke:
"Abe Lincoln, his hand and pen,
He will be good, but God knows when."
"That Abe Lincoln is funny enough to make a cat laugh," they said.
They always had a good time watching Abe during the class in "Manners."
Once a week Master Crawford had them practice being ladies and
gentlemen. One scholar would pretend to be a stranger who had just
arrived in Pigeon Creek.
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