Kids turned around to watch Abraham Lincoln walk through the library toward Mr. Biddle.
“This man is telling you one of those old Lincoln myths, walking fifteen miles to school,” Lincoln said. “The truth is, I did not attend more than a year’s worth of school in my entire—”
Lincoln tripped on the legs of seated kids and stumbled to the front of the room and crashed into the Smart Board.
“You all right, pal?” Mr. Biddle asked.
“Fine, thank you,” Lincoln said, straightening his hat. “I am Abraham Lincoln.”
“Me too,” Mr. Biddle said.
They shook hands.
Lincoln turned to the kids and said, “But you see, I truly am Abraham Lincoln.”
“You don’t sound like him!” a kid shouted.
“Like who?” Lincoln asked.
“Like Lincoln,” the kid said. “Your voice is too high.” He pointed to Mr. Biddle. “He sounds more like Lincoln.”
“Why, thank you, sir,” Mr. Biddle said in his fake deep voice.
“How do you know what I sounded like?” Lincoln asked. “There are no recordings of my voice. I died about ten years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. The exact year of that invention slips my mind—which reminds me of a forgetful fellow I knew back in Illinois. One night he put his suit to bed and threw himself over the back of a chair!”
Lincoln laughed. No one else did.
“Good one,” Abby said.
The room was silent.
“Um, does anyone mind if I continue?” asked Mr. Biddle.
“Please do,” said Ms. Ventura.
The screen switched to a picture of young Lincoln chopping wood with an ax.
“I grew tall and strong in my teen years,” Mr. Biddle said. “Look at those arms! You don’t get pipes like that from sitting on the couch and playing video games!”
Mr. Biddle flexed like a bodybuilder. Kids laughed and cheered.
Lincoln stepped in front of Mr. Biddle. “I was always eager to leave home,” he said. “My father and I, we never did get along. So at nineteen, I took a job on a boat on the Mississippi River. I traveled all the way to New Orleans, which is where I saw slavery up close for the first time. Seeing that evil—human beings bought and sold—had a profound impact on my life.”
Doc and Abby looked proud. Everyone else looked really confused.
Ms. Ventura said, “Who is this person?”
Doc jumped up and pointed to Lincoln. “He’s really the real Abraham Lincoln!”
“It’s true!” Abby said. “Ask him anything!”
“Where’s your beard?” asked a boy up front.
“Beard, beard!” Lincoln moaned. “Does anyone care about anything but the beard?”
“It does seem a shame,” Ms. Ventura said. “You’ve gone to the trouble of buying the whole Lincoln costume. Why not get the beard?”
“I’ve got the beard,” Mr. Biddle said, rubbing his chin.
Lincoln took a deep breath. “Okay, the beard story,” he said. “When I was a candidate for president of the United States, I got a letter from a girl of eleven named Grace Bedell. Grace wrote that her father supported me, and that she was trying to persuade others to—well, I have the letter here somewhere.”
He took off his hat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He pointed to Maya, a girl sitting up front, saying, “Read this part here.”
Maya stood, took the paper, and read:
If you let your whiskers grow, I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you. You would look a great deal better, for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.
The whole class laughed.
Doc and Abby smiled at each other. The plan was working!
“I was elected,” Lincoln said, “and by February of 1861, when I set off for Washington, DC, I had the beard. My train stopped in many towns along the way, and I even met Grace Bedell in western New York, where she lived. I bent down to show her…”
Lincoln bent toward Maya, touched his chin, and said, “You see, I let these whiskers grow for you, Grace.”
The class laughed again. Kids called out:
“That’s hilarious!”
“What happened next?”
Lincoln smiled. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah!” lots of kids called.
“Forget history, let’s talk about wrestling!” Mr. Biddle said. “How many of you guys are going to the big match tonight?”
“Wrestling?” Lincoln asked. “I’ve always loved to wrestle. I’m even in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame!”
“No way,” Mr. Biddle said.
“Honorary member,” Lincoln said. “Look it up.”
Turning to the kids, he said, “Back when I first moved to Illinois, there was this gang of town bullies. Everyone was afraid of them. But I challenged their leader, the toughest of the bunch, to a wrestling match. And I thrashed the man with the whole town looking on!”
That got a massive cheer.
“In this school, we prefer to use our words,” Principal Darling said.
She was standing in the doorway, arms folded. She was glaring at Abraham Lincoln.
Doc said, “Uh-oh.”