For a while he was postmaster.  A man on horseback brought the mail twice a week, and there were so few letters that Abe often carried them around in his hat until he could deliver them.  He liked the job because it gave him a chance to read the newspapers to which the people in New Salem subscribed.  But the pay was small, and he had to do all sorts of odd Jobs to earn enough to eat.  On many days he would have gone hungry if Jack Armstrong and his wife, Hannah, had not invited him to dinner.  When work was scarce he stayed with them two or three weeks at a time.

He knew that he had to find a way to earn more money, and he decided to study surveying.  It was a hard subject, but he borrowed some books and read them carefully.  He studied so hard that in six weeks’ time he took his first job as a surveyor.

Sometimes when he was measuring a farm or laying out a new road, he would be gone for several weeks.  People miles from New Salem knew who Abe Lincoln was.  They laughed at him because he was so tall and awkward.  They thought it funny that his trousers were always too short.  But they also laughed at his jokes, and they liked him.  He made so many new friends that he decided to be a candidate for the Illinois legislature.

One day during the campaign he had a long talk with Major John T. Stuart.  Major Stuart had been Abe’s commander in the Black Hawk War.  He was now a lawyer in Springfield, a larger town twenty miles away.

“Why don’t you study law?” he asked.

Abe pursed his lips.  “I’d sure like to,” he drawled; then added with a grin:  “But I don’t know if I have enough sense.”

Major Stuart paid no attention to this last remark.  “You have been reading law for pleasure,” he went on.  “Now go at it in earnest.  I’ll lend you the books you need.”

This was a chance that Abe could not afford to miss.  Every few days he walked or rode on horseback to Springfield to borrow another volume.  Sometimes he read forty pages on the way home.  He was twenty-five years old, and there was no time to waste.

Meanwhile he was making many speeches.  He asked the voters in his part of Illinois to elect him to the legislature which made the laws for the state.  They felt that “Honest Abe” was a man to be trusted and he was elected.

Late in November Abe boarded the stagecoach for the ride to Vandalia, then the capital of the state.  He looked very dignified in a new suit and high plug hat.  In the crowd that gathered to tell him good-by, he could see many of his friends.  There stood Coleman Smoot who had lent him money to buy his new clothes.  Farther back he could see Mr. Rutledge and Ann, Hannah and Jack Armstrong, Mentor Graham, and others who had encouraged and helped him.  And now he was on his way to represent them in the legislature.  There was a chorus of “Good-by, Abe.”

Then, like an echo, the words came again in Ann’s high, sweet voice:  “Good-by, Abe!” He leaned far out the window and waved.