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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: any feat of frontier athletics, was doubtless a matter of pride
with him; but stronger than all else was his eager craving for
knowledge. He felt instinctively that the power of using the mind
rather than the muscles was the key to success. He wished not
only to wrestle with the best of them, but to be able to talk
like the preacher, spell and cipher like the school-master, argue
like the lawyer, and write like the editor. Yet he was as far as
possible from being a prig. He was helpful, sympathetic,
cheerful. In all the neighborhood gatherings, when settlers of
various ages came together at corn-huskings or house-raisings, or
when mere chance brought half a dozen of them at the same time to
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