Then Abe got hold of a book.

I can't rikkilect the name.

It told a yarn about a feller, a nigger or suthin', that sailed a flatboat up to a rock, and the rock was magnetized and drawed all the nails out, and he got a duckin' or drowned or suthin',--I forget now.

[It was the "Arabian Nights."] Abe would lay on the floor with a chair under his head and laugh over them stories by the hour.

I told him they was likely lies from beginnin' to end, but he learned to read right well in them.