The
volumes that he thus absorbed were the _Bible_, _Aesop's Fables_, _Arabian
Nights_, _Robinson Crusoe_, _The Pilgrim's Progress_, _Franklin's
Autobiography_, Weems's _Life of Washington_, and two or three textbooks.
Without such good reading, which served to guide his practice in writing
and speaking, he could never have been President. Later in life he read
Shakespeare, especially _Macbeth_.
Parts of his _Second Inaugural Address_ (1865) show even better than his
_Gettysburg Address_ the influence of the _Bible_ on his thought and style.
One reason why there is so much weak and ineffective prose written to-day
is because books like the _Bible_ and _The Pilgrim's Progress_ are not read
and reread as much as formerly. Of the North and the South, he says in his
_Second Inaugural_:--
"Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his
aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to
ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of
other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The
prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered
fully.
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