ew himself into the task of becoming a real lawyer under
Logan's direction. However, his zeal flagged after a time, and when the
partnership ended four years later he had to some extent fallen back
into earlier, less strenuous habits. "He permitted his partner to do all
the studying in the preparation of cases, while he himself trusted to
his general knowledge of the law and the inspiration of the surroundings
to overcome the judge or the jury."(5) Though Lincoln was to undergo
still another stimulation of the scholarly conscience before finding
himself as a lawyer, the four years with Logan were his true student
period. If the enthusiasm of the first year did not hold out, none the
less he issued from that severe course of study a changed man, one who
knew the difference between the learned lawyer and the unlearned. His
own methods, to be sure, remained what they always continued to be,
unsystematic, not to say slipshod. Even after he became president his
lack of system was at times the despair of his secretaries.(6) Herndon,
who succeeded Logan as his partner, and who admired both men, has a
broad hint that Logan and Lincoln were not always an harmonious firm.
A clash of political ambitions is part explanation; business methods
another. "Logan was scrupulously exact and used extraordinary care in
the preparation of papers. 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 d