or even charged. Lincoln, to whom a passing immigrant had sold a barrel of rubbish in which he found a Blackstone, lay under a tree all day long, "grinding around with the shade," and studied law.

As the extension of business and the specialization in liquor did not help matters, Lincoln, in May, accepted an opportunity to increase his income. He was appointed postmaster. His duties were slight, for he carried the post in his hat, but no postmaster made better use of his opportunities. Not a newspaper came in but was faithfully read by him. It was a serious waking-up period in his life. He was studying the world, and he was delving into fundamental ideas. He read Volney and Paine. He became anti-religious, better to say, anti-creed.

It was the year 1833, and the age of reason was sending its last ripples into the uttermost end of the earth. Lincoln, who was born free of thought, free of convention and creed, as the young saplings that grew in the virgin forest, clung to reason and to what he could see and feel with his own senses. He had what the Yankee calls hard common sense. He had to see things for himself, as he had to do things for himself, for, unlike his old patron Offutt, he did not "talk with his mouth alone." No one waited upon anyone in this rude democracy of an undeveloped country. There was the right of private property, which might buy service. But such were the changing conditions that the new country made each one both master and workman combined. Lincoln would have been the practical reasoner had he never read Volney or Paine. But the influence of the writers was strong in the country which boasted of its democracy.

By the very nature of democracy it permits of no fixed church.

Lincoln, in those days of simple reasoning and study, always had upon himself the burden of making a living. The stores which were "winking out"only increased his need of money. The postmastership helped very little, and in May he was offered the position of Deputy Surveyor. He eagerly accepted it, walking ten miles to have an interview with Calhoun, who was Surveyor of the County, and through whom the position was received. Lincoln told him frankly that he knew nothing of surveying, but Calhoun, who needed men to help him, and who could get no better man, gave him six weeks in which to acquaint himself with the subject, lending him the books he needed. Lincoln went to his old friend, Menton Graham, the schoolmaster who had helped him once before in the study of grammar, and who now worked over the problems with him in Flint and Gibson's Treatise on Surveying. These two years would have been most profitable for him, with their many changes, were it not for the stores, which bound him each day tighter in the coil of an overwhelming debt.

Finally, early in the year 1834, the firm of Berry & Lincoln was sold to two brothers named Trent. The men proved irresponsible, and failing before their notes were due, disclaimed any intention of paying. Berry died, breaking the camel's back by drinking a little too much, and the whole debt fell upon Lincoln's shoulders. It seemed so voluminous to him that he always referred to it as the national debt. He used his salary as postmaster and surveyor to pay it off. Fourteen years

later, as Congressman, he was still sending part of his salary for this national debt of his.

The political venture of two years before encouraged him to make another effort. He was sure of the united support of the Whigs, and his personal influence, which had carried New Salem before, would now, better known as he was, bring him the support of many Democrats, and so he again ran for the State Legislature. This time, of the four men elected, Lincoln stood second. Somehow there was a personality to that tall, ungainly youth which seemed especially attractive to his own community. He fitted them; he seemed their most apt expression.

To the degree that the community loved him and had faith in him, there were to be found individuals who had the same love and faith. It seemed he could always turn to someone who would trust and help him in the material necessities of life. As he found the Herndon brothers to sell him all their stock on a promissory note, so he found a young friend called Smoot who gave him $200, whereby he could buy himself a new suit of clothes and enter Vandalia, the capitol of Illinois, attired more in harmony with the dignity of his new office. His first session in the Legislature is more important as to the effect it had on his own development than on the mark he made in it himself. He was elected on the policies of internal improvement. The whole Legislature was pledged to that policy, and Lincoln joined with the rest in voting vast sums which they did not possess for improvements for imaginary cities and townships not yet laid out. He came back to New Salem in the spring of 1835, having laid the foundation

of friendships with men who were to bear an important part in the political history of the country, and with a broadened and enlightened outlook upon life. He was dealing truly with the facts of civilization. The split rails and the axe were now definitely laid aside.

I

CHAPTER II

ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE

T was at this period, after having reached out into the world, that romance entered his life. There

were days when, as a lad in Gentryville, he had sat on the bank of a river with his schoolmate, Kate Roby, and told her how the earth revolved around the sun and the moon around the earth. But the hard pioneer life did not permit of tender scenes to come often. There was no time for it. On the other hand, his own nature and self-respect did not permit of frontier carousals. Intense as he was, his life was peculiarly free of romance, and of what is more commonly termed women. It was only at twenty-four that he had his first love; some say his one and only great love. His wife's relations, speaking after the death of both Lincoln and his wife, resent the talk of another romance than that which culminated in the marriage. So much is true for their side that there was no other definite engagement to marry than that one. But it seems indisputable that his soul went through the fire of some crisis at this period, that the man who came back from Vandalia was somehow different from the man who discussed politics around the stove in the country store, or umpired cock-fights or had tests of strength in moving chickenhouses or lifting barrels of whisky. That beauty of melancholy which characterized his later years, and which is so innately bound up with the portrait of the