Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address

[RJNorton]

(Yesterday 01:27 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Lincoln seems to have had an early and long-standing attachment to the sounds of words. Learning to read in “blab” schools, where all the students read aloud (and at the same time), may have been instrumental in starting him in this direction. If true, this would suggest that it was perhaps as fundamental as his early fascination with crafting letters, words, and phrases. Working with words may well have been an aural experience from the beginning that became ingrained in his thought process. These are speculations, to be sure, but there is abundant evidence that Lincoln had long made a practice of reading his writings aloud to test them. One of his law students remembered him saying as early as 1845, “I write by ear. When I have got my thoughts on paper, I read it aloud, and if it sounds all right I just let it pass.”[33]

Reading this made me think of the following story. As a youth Lincoln once helped a girl who was having trouble with the word "defied." In a spelling bee, Katy Roby began spelling the word...d-e-f and then was stuck on the next letter. Was it an "i" or a "y?" Lincoln was standing nearby and pointed to his eye when the teacher (Andrew Crawford, I think) was not looking. Katy took the hint, said "i" and completed the word correctly.