``I meant to take good care of your book, Mr. Crawford,'' said the boy, ``but I've damaged it a good deal without intending to, and now I want to make it right with you.  What shall I do to make it good?''
 
``Why, what happened to it, Abe?'' asked the rich farmer, as he took the copy of Weems's ``Life of Washington'' which he had lent young Lincoln, and looked at the stained leaves and warped binding.  ``It looks as if it had been out through all last night's storm.  How came you to forget, and leave it out to soak?''
 
``It was this way, Mr. Crawford,'' replied Abe. ``I sat up late to read it, and when I went to bed, I put it away carefully in my bookcase, as I call it, a little opening between two logs in the wall of our cabin.  I dreamed about General Washington all night.  When I woke up I took it out to read a page or two before I did the chores, and you can't imagine how I felt when I found it in this shape.  It seems that the mud-daubing had got out of the weather side of that crack, and the rain must have dripped on it three or four hours before I took it out.  I'm sorry, Mr. Crawford, and want to fix it up with you, if you can tell me how, for I have not got money to pay for it.''
 
``Well,'' said Mr. Crawford, ``come and shuck corn three days, and the book 's yours.''
 
Had Mr. Crawford told young Abraham Lincoln that he had fallen heir to a fortune the boy could hardly have felt more elated.  Shuck corn only three days, and earn the book that told all about his greatest hero!
 
``I don't intend to shuck corn, split rails, and the like always,'' he told Mrs.  Crawford, after he had read the volume.  ``I'm going to fit myself for a profession.''
 
``Why, what do you want to be, now?'' asked Mrs. Crawford in surprise.
 
``Oh, I'll be President!'' said Abe with a smile.
 
``You'd make a pretty President with all your tricks and jokes, now, wouldn't you?'' said the farmer's wife.
 ``Oh, I'll study and get ready,'' replied the boy, ``and then maybe the chance will come.''