A small balance due the government remained in the hands of Lincoln at the discontinuance of the office.  Time passed on, and he had removed to Springfield and was practicing law, having his place of business in Dr. Henry’s office.  Meanwhile his struggle with poverty was unabated, and he had often been obliged to borrow money from his friends to purchase the barest necessities.  It was at this juncture that the agent of the United States called for a settlement of his post-office accounts.  The interview took place in the presence of Dr. Henry who thus describes it:  “I did not believe he had the money on hand to meet the draft, and I was about to call him aside and loan him the money, when he asked the agent to be seated a moment.  He went over to his trunk at his boarding-house and returned with an old blue sock with a quantity of silver and copper coin tied up in it.  Untying the sock, he poured the contents on the table and proceeded to count the coin, which consisted of such silver and copper pieces as the country people were then in the habit of using in paying postage.  On counting it up, there was found the exact amount of the draft to a cent, and in the identical coin which had been received.  He never, under any circumstances, used trust funds.”

When Lincoln was about twenty-three years of age, some time in 1832, he began studying law, using an old copy of Blackstone’s Commentaries which he had bought at auction in Springfield.  This work was soon mastered, and then the young man looked about him for more.  His friend of the Black Hawk War, Major John T. Stuart, had a considerable law library for those days, and to him Lincoln applied in his extremity.  The library was placed at his disposal, and thenceforth he was engrossed in the acquisition of its contents.  But the books were in Springfield, where their owner resided; and New Salem was some fourteen miles distant.  This proved no obstacle in the way of Lincoln, who made nothing of the walk back and forth in the pursuit of his purpose.  Mr. Stuart’s partner, Mr. H.C.  Dummer, who took note of the youth in his frequent visits to the office, describes him as “an uncouth looking lad, who did not say much, but what he did say he said straight and sharp.”  “He used to read law,” says Henry McHenry, “barefooted, seated in the shade of a tree just opposite Berry’s grocery, and would grind around with the shade, occasionally varying his attitude by lying flat on his back and putting his feet up the tree,” a situation which might have been unfavorable to mental application in the case of a man with shorter extremities.  “The first time I ever saw Abe with a law-book in his hand,” says Squire Godbey, “he was sitting astride Jake Bates’s woodpile in New Salem.  Says I, ‘Abe, what are you studying?’ ‘Law,’ says Abe.  ‘Good God Almighty!’ responded I.”  It was too much for Godbey; he could not suppress the exclamation of surprise at seeing such a figure acquiring learning in such an odd situation.  Mr. Arnold states that Lincoln made a practice of reading in his walks between Springfield and New Salem; and so intense was his application and so absorbed was he in his study that he would pass his best friends without observing them, and some people said that Lincoln was going crazy with hard study.