Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) had just been appointed as 16th president of the USA in 1860, when newspapers asked him for details of his early life. To their great astonishment, he told them it would be great folly to make anything out of him or his early years: it could be summarised in a single line of Thomas Gray's ?Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard?: ?The short and simple annals of the poor.? Knowing his early life had been one of grinding poverty, they wanted to file an unusual story.

When some people reach a higher position, they often hire pen-pushers to write their biographies; they press for exaggerated points, which readers may find exciting but are generally untrue. They think their life story can be taken for a tale ? an uphill climb for generations to read and remember them as national heroes. This is sheer dishonesty. But Abraham Lincoln, nicknamed ?Honest Abe? whose life is a lesson to such bluffers and impostors is an inspiration to those trying to attain their end. He is the proof that poverty can pose no obstacle when the desire to succeed is intense.

Born on 12 February1809 on a bed of poles covered with corn husk and raised in a log cabin in the back-woods of Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln soon came to know life in all its grimness. Without a specific job, his father Thomas Lincoln was so poor that his wife Nancy had to pin her dresses with wild thorns. In harsh winters, Nancy and her children slept ?like dogs, curled up in bearskins dumped on the floor in a corner of the shed?. Too poor to buy food, they lived on what they obtained in the wild. Nancy died when Abraham was nine.

While his father spent his time hunting, Abraham and his sister ran the place. Thomas Lincoln then got a new wife from Kentucky, a widow with three children. Abraham did not wish to be a farmer; so he tried various occupations. But he was destined to become somebody else.

At 15, he knew the alphabet but read with difficulty; he could not write. He walked four miles to attend classes. He gradually developed a love for learning though his formal education was short and he admitted his education had been ?defective?. But his love of reading and search for knowledge had no end. His stepmother brought with her The Bible, Aesop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress and Sinbad the Sailor. Abraham would read them very carefully and, the more he read, the more he yearned to read. He walked 20 miles to borrow law books. He read biographies, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, etc. He walked 15 miles to hear lawyers argue in court. Somehow he became a lawyer, debated with Judge Douglas and was elected president of the United States of America.

Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery and, through a terrible civil war between the Northern and Southern States, he saved the Union, the ideal of democracy. Soon after the treaty of peace was signed, he went to the theatre with his wife. An actor, John W. Booth - considered half mad - crept into the president's box and shot him. The next morning,15 April 1865, he died.

Reared amid poverty, without education, he managed to achieve the position of president. Despite failures, Lincoln emerged as a key figure in American history. But the story of his early life is a most captivating tale. Lincoln's journey from the log cabin to the White House is fabulous and heroic, a daring adventure.

<B>Kaviraj SOHUR</B>