After everybody else in town was questioning whether or not the store was making money, Lincoln himself declared it was petering out.
This in no way interfered with his story-telling and studying hours. The store was head-quarters for political and all other kinds of discussions, and study-hall for the most unwearying scholar in the village.
So it happened that when Abraham should have been devising schemes to make money he was memorizing Blackstone, debating some point of Constitutional law, or working out some rule of grammar.
Nor was this the worst. While Lincoln was letting the store go to ruin for lack of business skill and application, his partner, Berry, was drinking up the wet portion of the stock.
John McNeil looked on with disgust and made comments, many of them to Ann Rutledge. She could not deny them, for she had found Abe Lincoln a most absent-minded and in some ways a most unsatisfactory boarder.
More than once she had rung the bell at meal-time with no success at bringing Abe Lincoln to the table. Once when she was sure he must be half-starved she went to the store to bring him. She found him stretched on the counter with head propped up against a roll of calico, deeply buried in a dingy, leather-bound book. When she finally drew attention to herself from the book he said: "Run back home, Ann, Blackstone is making a point. I'll be there in a few minutes."
Determined that he should eat, after waiting an hour she went back to the store carrying a plate of food. "Abraham Lincoln," she said, "you've got to eat."
"What for?" he asked absently.
"Because if you don't you'll get to be nothing more than a human grape-vine and you won't even be as good looking as you are now."