ndebtedness. Lincoln patiently continued to make payments during
several years to come, until he had discharged the whole amount. It was
only a few hundred dollars, but to him it seemed so enormous that
betwixt jest and earnest he called it "the national debt." So late as in
1848, when he was a member of the House of Representatives at
Washington, he applied part of his salary to this old indebtedness.

During this "store"-keeping episode he had begun to study law, and while
"keeping shop" he was with greater diligence reading Blackstone and such
other elementary classics of the profession as he could borrow. He
studied with zeal and became absorbed in his books. Perched upon a
woodpile, or lying under a tree with his feet thrust upwards against the
trunk and "grinding around with the shade," he caused some neighbors to
laugh uproariously, and others to say that he was daft. In fact, he was
in grim earnest, and held on his way with much persistence.

May 7, 1833, Lincoln was commissioned as postmaster at New Salem. His
method of distributing the scanty mail was to put all the letters in his
hat, and to hand them out as he happened to meet the persons to whom
they were addressed. The emoluments could hardly have gone far towards
the discharge of "the national debt." His incumbency in this office led
to a story worth telling. When New Salem, and by necessity also the
post-office, like the grocery shop, "winked out," in 1836, there was a
trifling balance of sixteen or eighteen dollars due from Lincoln to the
government. Several years afterward, when he was practicing law in
Springfield, the government agent at last appeared to demand a
settlement. Lincoln went to his trunk and drew forth "an old blue sock
with a quantity of silver and copper coin tied up in it," the identical
bits of money which he had gathered from the people at New Salem, and
which, through many days of need in the long intervening period, he had
not once touched.

Fortunately an occupation now offered itself which was more lucrative,
and possessed also the valuable quality of leaving niches of leisure for
the study of the law. The mania for speculation in land had begun in
Illinois; great tracts were being cut up into "town lots," and there was
as lively a market for real estate as the world has ever seen. The
official surveyor of the county, John Calhoun, had more work than he
could do, and offered to appoint Lincoln as a deputy. A little study
made