A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me a handsomely framed print of a painting by the 19th Century American artist Eastman Johnson. The painting is called “The Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln” and shows a young Lincoln, perhaps thirteen years old, reading a book by firelight in a rough-finished cabin. The occasion for this gift was the successful launch of a new classical boarding school, St. Martin’s Academy, which I co-founded with a friend of mine and for which I served as founding headmaster. The painting was particularly apt for the occasion since our school in rural Kansas served high school aged young men and combined a classical curriculum with manual labor on a small sustainable farm. There was much in the Lincoln painting that resonated with our educational aspirations—not least the wholesome simplicity of the setting and the intensity with which the young Lincoln leaned toward the light of the fire in his eagerness to read.