Abraham went to him one day, and said:
"I have a notion to study grammar."
"If you ever expect to enter public life, you should do so," said Mr. Graham. "Why not begin now and recite to me?"
"Where shall I secure a book?" asked the student of this hard college of the wood.
"There is a man named Vaner, who lives six miles from here, who has a grammar that I think he will be willing to sell."
"If it be possible, I will secure it," said Lincoln.
He made a long walk and purchased the book, and so made a grammar-school, a class of one, of his leisure moments in Orfutt's store.
While he thus was studying grammar, the men whom he thirty or more years afterward made Cabinet ministers, generals, and diplomats were enjoying the easy experiences of schools, military academies, and colleges. Not one of them ever dreamed of such an experience of soul-building and mind-building as this; and some of them, had they met him then, would have felt that they could not have invited him to their homes. Orfutt's store and that one grammar were not the elms of Yale, or the campus of Harvard, or the great libraries or bowery streets of English Oxford or Cambridge. Yet here grew and developed a soul which was to tower above the age, and hold hands with the master spirits not only of the time but the ages.
Years passed, and one day that sad-faced boy, who was always seeking to make others cheerful amid the clouds of his own gloom, stood before a grim council of war. He had determined to call into the field of arms five hundred thousand men.
"If you do that thing," said a leader of the council, "you can not expect to be elected again President of the United States."