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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: certainly as the acorn grows to be the oak.
Even his privations helped the end. Self-reliance, the strongest
trait of the pioneer was his by blood and birth and training, and
was developed by the hardships of his lot to the mighty power
needed to guide our country through the struggle of the Civil
War.
The sense of equality was his also, for he grew from childhood to
manhood in a state of society where there were neither rich to
envy nor poor to despise, and where the gifts and hardships of
the forest were distributed without favor to each and all alike.
In the forest he learned charity, sympathy, helpfulness--in a
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