his utter ignorance of surveying was such that it would be impossible for him to accept the job.

Calhoun took such a liking to the young man's frankness and apparent intelligence that he gave him a treatise on surveying by Flint and Gibson, and advised him to study it and when he thought he could master the subject to report to him, Calhoun, for duty.

Lincoln returned to New Salem and began the new venture of qualifying himself for a deputy county sur

veyor.

As he had mastered his Kirkham the year before with Graham's help, he now determined to master Flint and Gibson likewise with Graham's help.

Herndon relates that "Graham's daughter is authority for the statement that her father and Lincoln frequently sat up until midnight, engrossed in calculations, and only ceased when her mother drove them out for a fresh supply of wood for the fire."

Herndon further relates in this connection: "He was so studious and absorbed in his application at one time that his friends, according to a statement made by one of them, noticed that he was so emaciated we feared he might bring on mental derangement."

In six weeks, however, he had mastered his book and again reported to Calhoun, but before accepting the job, knowing Calhoun's intense partisan principles, he said:

"If I can be perfectly free in my political action, I will take the office, but if my sentiments or even expression of them is to be abridged in any way, I would not have it nor any other office."

He got the job.

This was the most money that Lincoln ever got for any service up to this time, three dollars per day. He became a painstaking, careful, and thorough sur

veyor.

One of his biographers relates that upon one occasion Lincoln was called to decide or locate a disputed corner for some persons in the northern part of the county. Among others interested was his friend and admirer Henry McHenry. According to the latter's recollection, the following happened:

"After a good deal of disputing we agreed to send for Lincoln and to abide by his decision. He came with compass, flag-staff, and chain. He stopped with me three or four days and surveyed the whole section. When in the neighborhood of the disputed corner by actual survey he called for his staff, and driving it in the ground at a certain spot said 'Gentlemen, here is the corner.' We dug down into the ground at the point indicated and, lo! there we found about six or eight inches of the original stake sharpened at the end and beneath which was the usual piece of charcoal placed there by Rector the surveyor who laid the ground off for the government many years before."

That part of Illinois was developing very rapidly, and Lincoln frequently laid out the original town plats. Among these was the town of Petersburg, the original survey of which bears Mr. Lincoln's name. It is claimed with some show of probability that his first chain was not a chain, but rather only a grapevine.

Several of his biographers relate the fact that once his surveyor's instruments were sold to pay one of the old Berry debts. A friend came to his rescue, bid in the instruments and returned them to Mr. Lincoln.

I want to challenge attention to one thing especially in connection with his duties as a surveyor: We hear much nowadays about surveys, inventories, taking stock of everything you have and that the other fellow has. Lincoln applied much of the same method and philosophy to the survey of every subject that was submitted to him for study, consideration, and judgment, not only in cases in court, but causes in government.

In his experience as a surveyor he came in contact very frequently with the word "dedicate": the dedication of streets, of public grounds, and the laying out of his town plats-that is, the giving over, yielding, consecrating something to a public use, or a public service and we shall see and learn much of this word dedicate in future chapters.

CHAPTER VI

LINCOLN ENTERS POLITICS

(CONTINUED)

SHORTLY after Lincoln and Berry had sold out their store to the Trent Brothers, and the whole thing had "petered out," as Lincoln said, Lincoln was commissioned postmaster at New Salem by President Jackson, though he was known at the time to be a stanch Whig.

The duties were not very burdensome, the mail arriving only once a week. The post-office was really under Lincoln's hat, where he carried the mail in his trips around the neighborhood. The office was nominally in the Hill store of New Salem. The small salary, however, was the most insignificant part of it.

The really important thing was the efficiency of the postmaster, who gave universal satisfaction in his management of the office and had the opportunity of reading all the newspapers that came to the office, which furnished him his information as to current events. Nobody will ever be able fairly to estimate the large fund of information of a public nature that Abraham Lincoln gathered from the great newspapers of that day by his inveterate reading and study.

In 1834 he again became a candidate for the legislature upon substantially the same declaration of principles on which he made his canvass in 1832. He was elected by an unusually large vote. His friend

John T. Stuart, afterward his partner, was also a candidate on that same ticket. Lincoln, however, led Stuart by more than 200, a very flattering vote indeed.

Some say he walked to the capital to be inducted into office, some say he rode on horseback, some by stage. It is immaterial which way he went. Everybody knows that he was so poor that he had to borrow money to buy suitable clothing, and to take care of his preliminary expenses while at the State capital, which was then Vandalia. The preponderance of the evidence, however, suggests that he went to the capital by stage-coach, as the public generally did in that day.

During his first term he conducted himself with becoming modesty and took little part in the public discussions, but he had a keen eye and discriminating judgment to learn the "ropes" of procedure and parliamentary law, of committee work, and the general legislative machinery of the State.

As one man, Mentor Graham, was big in his influence on Lincoln at New Salem, so here at Vandalia, and alike at the new capital of Springfield, there were many big young men, full of the fibre and fire of the frontier, that made a wonderful impression upon Lincoln, knocked off many of his sharp edges and rough corners, and qualified him for useful and distinguished service as a member of the legislature, and later as a member of the bar.

The legislative sessions then, as they should be now, were short, and his brief service during his first term seems to have whetted his appetite for further political honors. He became a candidate again in 1836, as fully appears from the following circular in the Sangamon Journal: