While a student at Harvard he determined to write the history of the French and English in North America.

With a steadiness and devotion seldom equaled he gave his life, his fortune, his all to this one great object.

Although he had, while among the Dakota Indians, collecting material for his history, ruined his health and could not use his eyes more than five minutes at a time for fifty years, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the high purpose formed in his youth, until he gave to the world the best history upon this subject ever written.
After Lincoln had walked six miles to borrow a grammar, he returned home and burned one shaving after another while he studied the precious prize.
Gilbert Becket, an English Crusader, was taken prisoner and became a slave in the palace of a Saracen prince, where he not only gained the confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair daughter.

By and by he escaped and returned to England, but the devoted girl determined to follow him.

She knew but two words of the English language--_London_ and _Gilbert_; but by repeating the first she obtained passage in a vessel to the great metropolis, and then she went from street to street pronouncing the other--"Gilbert." At last she came to the street on which Gilbert lived in prosperity.