Thanks for ruining the ceiling, jackass. (Image by Mathew Brady.)

I recently posted about Abraham Lincoln’s less-than-graceful youth, using examples from Carl Sandburg’s great biography, The Prairie Years. Here’s another brief tale of Lincoln’s boorish behavior from that tome:

“He put barefoot boys to wading in a mud puddle near the home trough, pulled them up one by one, carried them to the house upside down, and walked their muddy feet across the ceiling. The stepmother came in, laughed at their foot tracks, told Abe he ought to be spanked–and he cleaned the ceiling so that it looked new.”