At this time, when he was seventeen years old, he had a general knowledge of the rudiments of learning. He was a good arithmetician, he had some knowledge of geography and history, he could "spell down" the whole county at spelling-school, and wrote a clear and neat hand. His general reading embraced poetry and a few novels. He even attempted to make rhymes, although he was not very successful. He wrote several prose compositions, and it is related that "one of the most popular amusements in the neighborhood was to hear Abe Lincoln make a comic speech."
Lincoln received no more teaching, but continued his reading and study until his family removed to Illinois. When he went to New Salem, after he had made his second voyage to New Orleans, and was waiting for Denton Offutt to open his store, a local election was held. One of the clerks of election being unable to attend, Menton Graham, the other clerk, who was also the village school-master, asked Lincoln if he could write.
"I can make a few rabbit tracks," was the reply, and upon that admission he was sworn into his first office.
Thus began one of the most useful friendships he ever enjoyed, for Graham was an intelligent and sympathetic friend who inspired the future President with ambition, nourished his appetite for knowledge, loaned him books, assisted him in his studies, heard him recite, corrected his compositions, and was his constant companion while he was clerking in Offutt's store. One day Graham told him that he ought to study grammar, and the next morning Lincoln walked six miles to a neighboring town to obtain a copy of Kirkham's "Grammar." This volume was found in his library after his death. It was Graham, too, who in six weeks taught him the science of surveying after Lincoln was appointed deputy to John Calhoun. From none of his many friends did he receive more valuable counsel and assistance.
After he was admitted to the bar and became a member of the Legislature, he continued a regular course of study, including mathematics, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, literature, and other branches, devoting a certain number of hours to it every day. He followed this rule even after his marriage, and several years after his return from Congress he joined a German class which met in his office two evenings a week.
His early friends have always contended that his devotion to study hastened the failure of the mercantile enterprise which caused him so much anxiety and left the burden of debt upon his shoulders which he carried so many years; for when he should have been attending to the store and watching the dissolute habits of his partner, he was absorbed in his books.
His ambition to be a lawyer was stimulated by a curious incident that occurred soon after he went into partnership with Berry. He related it himself in these words:
"One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it. Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone's 'Commentaries.' I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read"—this he said with unusual emphasis—"the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them."
It was while he was still a deputy surveyor that Lincoln was elected to the Legislature, and in his autobiographical notes he says, "During the canvass, in a private conversation, Major John T. Stuart (one of his fellow-candidates) encouraged Abraham to study law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him and went at it in good earnest. He never studied with anybody. As he tramped back and forth from Springfield, twenty miles away, to get his law books, he read sometimes forty pages or more on the way. The subject seemed to be never out of his mind. It was the great absorbing interest of his life." The rule he gave twenty years later to a young man who wanted to know how to become a lawyer, was the one he practised: "Get books and read and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone's 'Commentaries,' say twice, take Chitty's 'Pleadings,' Greenleaf's 'Evidence,' and Story's 'Equity,' in succession. Work, work, work is the main thing."
Immediately after his election he went to Springfield and was admitted to the bar on September 9, 1836. His name first appears upon the list of the attorneys and counsellors-at-law published at the opening of the next term, March 1, 1837. As there was no lawyer in the neighborhood of New Salem, and none nearer than Springfield, Lincoln had obtained a little practice in petty cases before the village magistrate, and it is stated that, poor as he was, he never accepted a fee for such services because he felt that he was fully paid by the experience.