Elder Sterling W. Sill, Part Two - Abraham Lincoln and the Drive to Read

 Choose your link for Part One, Part Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, or Eight - so many choices!

 

Elder Sterling W. Sill always had a soft spot in my heart, because he thinks like me. He wants to know the secret of success - and he taught it with great enthusiasm. In his April 1972 talk, "Medicine for the Soul", he brings in the big guy - everyone's favorite, Abraham Lincoln:

 

The Quote

 

"Abraham Lincoln once said, “What I want to know is in books.” 

Lincoln was a great one for self-education - another graduate of Book U, like myself.

But this quote is a sort of paraphrase of what he actually said.

And what he actually said, we have more secondhand.

In his book, "Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Great Life, Volume 1", his partner at law William Henry Herndon writes the following:

 

"He was always at school early...and attended to his studies. 

He was always at the head of his class, and passed us rapidly in his studies. 

He lost no time at home, and when he was not at work was at his books. 

He kept up his studies on Sunday, 

and carried his books with him to work, 

so that he might read when he rested from labor...

"...Abe's love for books, and his determined effort to obtain an education 

in spite of so many obstacles, 

induced the belief in his father's mind, 

that booklearning was absorbing a greater proportion of his energy and industry 

than the demands of the farm. 

The old gentleman had but little faith in the value of books or papers,

and hence the frequent drafts he made on the son to aid in the drudgery of daily toil. 

He undertook to teach him his own trade... he was a carpenter and joiner — 

but Abe manifested such a striking want of interest 

that the effort to make a carpenter of him was soon abandoned."

 

So Abraham Lincoln certainly WOULD have said such a thing at some point in his life - just not so much in these words.

He did write this poem, which is a similar thought, and he obviously lived it himself:

“Good boys who to their books apply,

Will all be great men by and by.”

Something else I love are the lines a 14-year-old Abraham Lincoln wrote in one of his school books, maybe thinking of his father's fruitless efforts to teach him more practical skills through his mad-dog determination to read instead:

 

" Abraham Lincoln, 

His hand and pen, 

He will be good, 

But God knows when." 

 

He had a real drive to improve himself, a real God-given desire and one that I've felt myself. I've always admired him for that.