His words were well chosen, and his style of composition was stately and formal."(7) He was industrious and very thrifty, while Lincoln had “no money sense.”  It must have annoyed, if it did not exasperate his learned and formal partner, when Lincoln signed the firm name to such letters as this:  “As to real estate, we can not attend to it.  We are not real estate agents, we are lawyers.  We recommend that you give the charge of it to Mr. Isaac S. Britton, a trust-worthy man and one whom the Lord made on purpose for such business."(8)

Superficial observers, then and afterward, drew the conclusion that Lincoln was an idler.  Long before, as a farm-hand, he had been called “bone idle."(9) And of the outer Lincoln, except under stress of need, or in spurts of enthusiasm, as in the earlier years with Logan, this reckless comment had its base of fact.  The mighty energy that was in Lincoln, a tireless, inexhaustible energy, was inward, of the spirit; it did not always ramify into the sensibilities and inform his outer life.  The connecting link of the two, his mere intelligence, though constantly obedient to demands of the outer life, was not susceptible of great strain except on demand of the spiritual vision.  Hence his attitude toward the study of the law.  It thrilled and entranced him, called into play all his powers—­observation, reflection, intelligence—­just so long as it appeared in his imagination a vast creative effort of the spiritual powers, of humanity struggling perilously to see justice done upon earth, to let reason and the will of God prevail.  It lost its hold upon him the instant it became a thing of technicalities, of mere learning, of statutory dialectics.

The restless, inward Lincoln, dwelling deep among spiritual shadows, found other outlets for his energy during these years when he was establishing himself at the bar.  He continued to be a voracious reader.  And his reading had taken a skeptical turn.  Volney and Paine were now his intimates.  The wave of ultra-rationalism that went over America in the ’forties did not spare many corners of the land.  In Springfield, as in so many small towns, it had two effects:  those who were not touched by it hardened into jealous watchfulness, and their religion naturally enough became fiercely combative; those who responded to the new influence became a little affected philosophically, a bit effervescent.  The young men, when of serious mind, and all those who were reformers by temperament, tended to exalt the new, to patronize, if not to ridicule the old.  At Springfield, as at many another frontier town wracked by its growing pains, a Young Men’s Lyceum confessed the world to be out of joint, and went to work glibly to set it right.  Lincoln had contributed to its achievements.  An oration of his on “Perpetuation of Our Free Institutions,"(10) a mere rhetorical “stunt” in his worst vein now deservedly forgotten, so delighted the young men that they asked to have it printed—­quite