l place," he said.

"This is my college," said Lincoln.

"What are you studying, my friend?"

"Oh, I am trying my hand at law a little. Stuart, the Springfield
lawyer, lends me his law-books, and I walk over there from New Salem to
get them, and when I get as far back as this I sit down on this log and
study. I can study when I am walking. I once mastered forty pages of
Blackstone in a walk. But I love to stop and study on this log. It is
rather a long walk from New Salem to Springfield--almost twenty
miles--and when I get as far back as this I feel tired. These trees are
so grand that they look like a house of Nature, and I call them my
college. I can't have the privileges of better-off young men, who can go
to Philadelphia, New York, or Boston to study law, and so I do the best
I can here. I get discouraged sometimes, but I believe that right is
might, and do my best, and there is something that is leading me on."

"I am glad to find you here, Abraham Lincoln. I love you in my heart,
and I wish that I might help you in your studies. But I have never
studied law."

"But you do help me."

"How?"

"By your faith in me. Elder, I have been having a hard row to hoe, and
am an unlucky fellow. Have been keeping a grocery, and we have
failed--failed right at the beginning of life. It hurt my pride, but,
elder, it has not hurt my honor. I've worked and paid up all my debts,
and now I am going to pay _his_. I might make excuses for not paying his
part of the debts, but, elder, it would not leave my name clear. I must
live conscience free. People call me a fool, but they trust me. They
have made me postmaster at New Salem, though that ain't much of an
office. The mail comes only once a week, and I carry it in my hat.
They'll need a new post-office by and by."

"My friend, you are giving yourself a moral self-education that has more
worth than all the advantages of wealth or a famous name or the schools
of Boston. The time will come when this growing people will need such a
man as you to lead them, and you will lead them more grandly than others
who have had an easier school. You have learned the first principles of
true education--it is, the habit that can not do wrong without feeling
the flames of torment within. Every sacrifice that you have made to your
conscience has given you power. That power is a godlike thing. You will
see all one day, as I do now."

"Elder, they call me a merry-maker, but I carry with me a sad