to cultivate the mind by reading and study was the more important thing and he did them a great deal of good.

CHAPTER IV.

While Abraham clerked in Mr. Offut's store he studied hard. Some one told him he ought to study grammar. In all the neighborhood there was but one grammar. He heard where it was, and started off at once, and got Kirkham's grammar. He applied himself to learning it, and would recite to his friend, Green, and then would consult the school teacher, Mr. Graham about points. In a few weeks he had learned it, and then took up other studies. The men thereabouts, seeing him study so much, got the idea that he was going to be a great man.

One morning in April, 1832, a messenger from the governor came into New Salem, scattering circulars asking for volunteers for the Black Hawk war. Black Hawk was one of the Indian chiefs who had caused the government a great deal of trouble.

He made an attack on the settlers. The governor called for help, and volunteers. Mr. Lincoln with a number of the Clary's Grove boys and others about New Salem volunteered and went down to Beardstown on the 22nd of April, 1832 to form a regiment. They did not have regular uniform, but each was dressed in whatever clothing he had. Many of them wore buckskin breeches and coonskin caps. Each man had his own blanket, and carried flint lock rifles, with a powder horn slung over his shoulder. Mr. Kirkpatrick wanted to be captain, and Lincoln thought he would like to be. This same Mr. Kirkpatrick had owed Abraham some money for a long time and would not pay it; so Lincoln said to a friend, he would run for the place, and may be Kirkpatrick would pay him. Each one stood out, and the men were told to stand beside the man they preferred for captain, and about two-thirds of them stood beside Lincoln, and thus he was made captain. He said afterwards when he was president, that he was never so proud of any election as that. They were not very well trained soldiers, and Mr. Lincoln did not know the commands very well. One day he wanted to get his company through a gateway, and he said, "I could not for the life of me remember the word of command for getting my company endwise so that it would get through the gate. So as we came near the gate, I shouted, this company will disband for two minutes, then it will fall in again on the other side of the gate."

A helpless Indian came to the camp one day and seven men wanted to kill him, but Captain Lincoln stood in front of the seven men and told them they should not hurt the helpless savage. The warfare was not very successful and the company mustered out in May; but in the latter end of the same month, Lincoln joined another company. A strange incident then occurred, the meeting of four men, who afterwards became very celebrated. It was on the Rock River near Dixon. There were together, Colonel Zachary Taylor, afterwards commander in general and president of the United States; Abraham Lincoln, afterwards president of the United States; Lieut. Anderson, afterwards commander of Ft. Sumter when it was fired upon and Lieut. Davis, afterwards president of the Southern Confederacy. On July 10th, Lincoln's company mustered out. It was three weeks before the last battle of the war which finally killed most of the Indians and scattered the rest.

He returned to New Salem, ran for a member of the legislature. There were eight candidates. He issued a circular in favor of widening the Sangamon River and made a canvass of the district, going largely to public sales and shaking hands with the people, and making speeches. At one place he helped settle a fight and then got upon the platform and went on with his speech. Lincoln was beaten in the election, although he was third man in the number of votes of the eight candidates. This was the only time that Abraham was ever defeated in a direct vote of the people.

After the election, he bought an interest with a man named Berry in a store. At the same time Lincoln began to study law. The law books were not very numerous. One day a man going past drove up to the store, and wanted him to buy a barrel of rubbish for which he had no room in his wagon. Lincoln paid half a dollar for it. Sometime afterwards in looking over the stuff, he found a complete edition of Blackstone's law commentary. "The more I read," said he, "the more interested I became. Never in my life was my mind so thoroughly possessed. I read until I devoured it." These books are quite a large set of books and it must have required a good deal of work to have learned them.

Lincoln was postmaster. The rates of postage then, were much higher than they are now. For instance, a single sheet letter carried thirty miles or under eighty was ten cents, four hundred miles, eighteen and one-half cents, and over that twenty-five cents. As Mr. Lincoln studied so hard, and his partner Berry did not attend to the business very well, the store was not prosperous. They gave it up and sold out. Lincoln then studied surveying, and became a surveyor. He also began to practice a little law, and when anybody had a law suit about New Salem, he was frequently employed. It is said that when he first took up surveying, he was too poor to buy him a chain, and had to use a grape vine. Between the surveying and a little law practice, Lincoln made his living; but it was not until fifteen years afterwards that he was able to settle all the debts made by the store of Berry & Lincoln.

The summer of 1834 he again ran for the legislature and was elected. The capital at this time was located at Vandalia instead of Springfield. They only had rough tables and benches for the legislators, and they did not receive as much pay as they do now. They wore the same kind of suits, buckskin trousers and coonskin caps as the soldiers of the Black Hawk war. At the time Mr. Lincoln was a member of the legislature it was very unpopular to be an abolitionist. The legislature passed a resolution condemning the abolitionists because they stirred up the people by agitating the freedom of slaves. Mr. Lincoln and one other man signed a protest against the resolution, and were the only members of the Illinois legislature at this time who were willing to stand up for the freedom of the slaves.

Mr. Lincoln continued to study law quite hard while he was a member of the legislature. He had four terms, and met some men there as fellow-members who afterwards became very prominent men.

It was about one hundred miles from New Salem to Vandalia, the capital of the state, where the legislature met. There were few railroads at that time and in addition Abraham Lincoln was very poor, so he walked to and from Vandalia. He was quite a big man and of course had big feet. They tell a funny story of one time he and a companion were walking home from Vandalia. It was cold weather and Mr. Lincoln complained of being very cold. His companion said: "Well, Abe, I don't see how you can help it when there is so much of you on the ground."

Mr. Lincoln was eight years a member of the state legislature and was one of the most active members in securing the change of the capital from Vandalia to Springfield, where it now is. Stephen A. Douglas was also a member of the legislature. There is another funny story I might tell you of Mr. Lincoln's peculiarity of appearance. Mr. Lovejoy, who was a congressman from Princeton, Illinois, and a great abolitionist was talking with Mr. Douglas one day in Washington when Mr. Lincoln was passing by. They called over Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Lovejoy said: "Abe, I have been telling Judge Douglas that his legs are too short (Mr. Douglas was a very short, heavy-set man), and yours are too long; what do you think about it?" Mr. Lincoln replied, "Well, I never gave the matter much thought but I have always been of the opinion that a man's legs ought to be long enough to reach from his body to the ground." In March, 1837, he was licensed to practice law, and concluded to move from New Salem to Springfield. A pathetic incident is related of his