When I was a boy, every school child knew about this, but I suspect they don’t teach it in schools anymore. In honor of Presidents Day, a snippet from Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years:

Having learned to read Abe read all the books he could lay his hands on. Dennis [Hanks], years later, tried to remember his cousin’s reading habits. “I never seen Abe after he was twelve ‘at he didn’t have a book some’ers ’round. He’d put a book inside his shirt an’ fill his pants pockets with corn dodgers, an’ go off to plow or hoe. When noon come he’d set down under a tree, an’ read an’ eat. In the house at night, he’d tilt a cheer by the chimbly, an’ set on his backbone an’ read. I’ve seen a feller come in an’ look at him, Abe not knowin’ anybody was round, an’ sneak out agin like a cat, an’ say, ‘Well, I’ll be darned.’ It didn’t seem natural, nohow, to see a feller read like that. Aunt Sairy’s never let the children pester him. She always said Abe was goin’ to be a great man some day. An’ she wasn’t goin’ to have him hendered.”

They heard Abe saying, “The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll git me a book I ain’t read.”