Nor were these studies pursued with less zeal at home, though, in truth, there seemed but few waking hours left for them. Between sessions of the Legislature, which customarily made heavy drafts upon its members’ time, Lincoln, facing the problem of how to live, “still mixed in the surveying”—so runs his homely expression—“to pay board and clothing bills.” Moreover, the postmastership with its occasional duties, as well as sundry bread-and-butter jobs of a less exalted character, all crowded their demands upon his attention. Yet some scraps of opportunity remained. Employing these diligently, by day and by night, he worked his way through Stuart’s collection.[i-58] To such good purpose, in fact, did he study the Major’s books that, before the list was exhausted, though “not lawyer enough to hurt” him, Lincoln had acquired skill enough to draw up bills of sale, contracts, deeds, mortgages, and the like, for his admiring neighbors. He even went so far as to represent them before the local justice, in sundry suits whereby his reputation was much enhanced, but not his income, for he made no charges whatever on accounts of these activities. This seemingly Quixotic practice of working without pay, at a time when poverty pressed sharply, was quite in keeping with the young man’s kindly nature, and his biographer is tempted to make the obvious comment. But here again, the hand of fact rudely intervenes. Brushing away the gossamer web of romance, it points to “an act concerning attorneys and counselors at law” in the statutes of Illinois that expressly prohibited unlicensed persons from formally practicing at the bar or from receiving fees for legal services.[i-59] After awhile, however, this disability, as far as it concerned the New Salem amateur, was, by the customary steps, removed. Before his second year of preparation had elapsed,—in the spring of 1836,—the necessary certificate of “good moral character” had been entered on the records of the Sangamon County Circuit Court. In the following autumn a license was issued, and later Abraham Lincoln’s name was duly inscribed on the roll of attorneys.[i-60] So “Honest Abe,” at the age of twenty-eight, became a full-fledged practitioner in that notable company of scholars that have furnished mankind with some of its noblest and, at the same time, with some of its most pernicious impulses. On which side this newcomer would exercise his talents, none doubted who had observed him in any of the makeshift occupations whereby he sustained himself while toiling up the circuitous path that led to the portals of the Supreme Court.
CHAPTER II
TRUTH IN LAW
EARLY one spring morning long ago,—to be precise, on the 15th day of April, 1837,—a solitary horseman might have been seen riding along the wagon road that ran from New Salem to Springfield. He was obviously not one of G. P. R. James’s jaunty heroes, nor yet a new-world variation on the melancholy Don, but romance and allegory alike can furnish forth few figures more striking than that which skirted the Illinois prairies on this particular forenoon. The traveler, sad-eyed and gaunt, was our friend Lincoln. His mount, a pony borrowed from Bowling Green, barely stepped high enough to keep the rider’s lank extremities from touching the ground. Nor did the picture that he presented gain in grace, as one’s eye rested on the man’s ill-fitting garments. Yet they were the best he had, for the bulging saddle-bags contained—as we now know—not clothing, but a few articles of underwear, packed in with that well-thumbed set of Blackstone’s Commentaries, several volumes of statute law, and two other books. Add to this inventory a small amount of money in pocket,—“about seven dollars,” according to one friend’s estimate,—and the whole sum of Lincoln’s own portable assets at the moment is told. To complete the balance-sheet, his liabilities, or, more accurately speaking, the evidences thereof, might be traced, line for line, in that pensive countenance. The shadow of “the national debt,” still brooding over all, did in fact overlay his prospective earnings as well as his actual means and leave him worse than penniless. It was in the hope of mending these broken fortunes that he now turned his back on the cherished associations of New Salem and rode with his scanty belongings to Springfield.
The city had held out welcoming hands. Its leading citizens felt grateful to Lincoln for effective aid rendered to them during the recent session of the General Assembly, in which they had secured a vote whereby the seat of government was transferred from Vandalia to Springfield; and his faculty, withal, for engaging the affections of men had already gained him several stanch friends in the new capital.
One of these admirers, William Butler, relates how after the victory at Vandalia, as the Sangamon delegation were returning home, Lincoln had, in a moment of depression, spoken to him of his gloomy prospects. Without money, resources, or employment, he did not know, as he said, “where to earn even a week’s board.”[ii-1] The listener’s ready sympathy had inspired him to suggest that Lincoln would prosper in the practice of his profession at Springfield; and before they parted company, Butler had fortified the proposal with a tender of hospitality at his own table, until the promised success should be attained. In response to this generous offer, as well as to other invitations hardly less cordial, the member from New Salem, a few weeks thereafter, came to make his home in the bustling little town, just quickening with a sense of its recently acquired dignity.
Having hitched his pony to a rack in the public square, Lincoln, with the saddle-bags over his arm, entered the general store of Joshua F. Speed. After an exchange of greetings,—for the two men knew each other,—the newcomer said: “I just want to put my saddle-pockets down here till I put up my beast at Bill Butler’s, then I want to see you.”
Returning in a short time, he continued: “Well, Speed, I’ve been to Gorman’s and got a single bedstead; now you figure out what it will cost for a tick, blankets, and the rest.”
After a brief interval with slate and pencil, the required furnishings were found to reach, so the storekeeper announced, a total of seventeen dollars.
Lincoln’s countenance fell, as he exclaimed: “I had no idea it would cost half of that! It is probably cheap enough,” he went on, “but I want to say that, cheap as it is, I have not the money to pay. But if you will credit me until Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you then. If I fail in that I will probably never be able to pay you at all.”
There was a note of dejection in the speaker’s voice and an air of gloom in his manner that deeply affected the man behind the counter. Recalling the scene, toward the latter end of his life, Mr. Speed declared, “As I looked up at him I thought then, and think now, that I never saw a sadder face.”