He had been growing fast in other ways than in the goodwill of his fellow-citizens; but he had not outgrown his honesty nor his debts. These had joined hands to keep him poor in purse, and a proper sense of personal dignity forbade him to go to the Capitol at Vandalia in the shabby clothing which was good enough for his daily round of life and work in New Salem. Money would also be required for other immediate expenses, and there was nothing in his hands that he could honestly sell to obtain it. He was already deeply in debt to his best friends, and his salary as a legislator could not be collected in advance. He had resources, however, and they did not fail him.

Among his older acquaintances was a man named Smoot, as dry a joker as himself, but better supplied with ready money. To him Lincoln went one day, in company with another friend, Hugh Armstrong.

"Smoot, did you vote for me?"

"I did that very thing."

“Well, that makes you responsible. You must lend me the money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent appearance in the Legislature."

"How much do you want?"

"About two hundred dollars, I reckon."

The honor of Sangamon County, and of New Salem in particular, was at stake, and the new representative received his two hundred dollars on the spot.

It is not difficult to guess whose eyes were among the first to discover how great a difference good clothing could make in the outer man of Ann Rutledge's tall lover. The new garments and the body under them were but a shell, however, inclosing the man to whom she was really surrendering her heart.

There were long weeks yet before Lincoln's new public duties were to begin, and not an hour of one of them could he afford to waste. He read as desperately as ever, and he was

also thinking deeply upon other subjects besides law. There was but little religion of any kind in and about New Salem, or through all the prairie country, in those rude days. Such as there was would hardly stand any exhaustive analysis. Few men gave any especial care to matters of faith or doctrine. There were many more horse-races and wrestling-matches than Gospel gatherings. The exceptional preaching was of a nature. little calculated to impress a mind like that of Abraham Lincoln. Moreover, there was a jarring of sects and creeds, here and there, as in other communities always, and out of this came vastly more of contention than Christianity. If what he saw around him were all there was of religion, it required less effort to reject than to accept it; but the searching mind of the young thinker compelled him to make some sort of personal inquiry. His first teachers were about as bad as could have been given him, and he was not yet prepared to penetrate the shallow reasoning of Volney and Tom Paine. He even tried to follow out their lines of thought in an elaborate manuscript, and when this was finished he read it to a little circle in the store of Mr. Samuel Hill. There were those present who thought well of it, but a son of Mr. Hill expressed his own opinion in the plain word "infamous," took the paper in his hand and thrust it into the fire. There was nearly enough of it for a small book, but it burned well and Lincoln very sensibly let it burn.

He did not know how closely he was following in the footsteps of the great majority of those who honestly seek for the Truth. Still less could he then foresee the day when he should himself kneel down and lead a whole nation in prayer and fasting and thanksgiving and confession of sin, and that in their darkest hour of trial he should rise before them to encourage them to trust in the very God whose existence he was now in callow fashion persuading himself to deny.

All true thinkers are necessarily "free thinkers" until they enter into some description of bonds to their own self-conceit

and surrender their freedom to that miserable taskmaster. Lincoln began as a free inquirer, and never fell in with the mob of bondmen, but went on learning more and more until the very end. That at such a time he exercised himself so deeply on such a subject is an invaluable index to the formative processes of his inner life.

The time at last arrived for his journey to the Capitol of the State, then at Vandalia, in the southern part of the long, huge area of Illinois. Thanks to Mr. Smoot's friendly loan, he was well prepared to go with proper dignity, and to make a presentable appearance among his fellow-legislators. He had but a hundred miles or so to travel, but that short journey carried him on into a new sphere of life and action.

Practical Politics-Lessons in Public Finance-Blowing Bubbles-A great

Darkness-1834-36.

MR. LINCOLN had now attained a position which was full of promise. The power of binding men to him by ties of strong personal attachment had been born with him. The capacity for influencing and controlling them when assembled as citizens for the discussion of political questions had been developed in him remarkably and almost without his knowledge. He was now to study and acquire the art or trade of managing a drove of selfish politicians. The material for such a training was gathered for him in perfection at Vandalia. He found himself surrounded by narrow-minded, ignorant embodiments of party prejudice, local jealousy, self-seeking, and self-conceit. In such a mob he could not help becoming a man of some mark, but during the greater part of that first "session" of 1834-1835 he neither sought nor attained especial prominence. He was as yet a student of politics, not ready to be an active worker and still less a leader. Of many things he knew as much as did the majority of his fellow-legislators, and of some things he knew a great deal more, but he was slow to tell them so. Few of them, at all events, could equal him in telling a story with a keen point to it, and none surpassed him in personal height or in the peculiar heartiness of manner which made him so speedily at home amid his new surroundings.

At the beginning of his education as a political manager, he was also at the beginning of a long course of experimental instruction as to what could and what could not safely be done

and surrender their freedom to that miserable taskmaster. Lincoln began as a free inquirer, and never fell in with the mob of bondmen, but went on learning more and more until the very end. That at such a time he exercised himself so deeply on such a subject is an invaluable index to the formative processes of his inner life.

The time at last arrived for his journey to the Capitol of the State, then at Vandalia, in the southern part of the long, huge area of Illinois. Thanks to Mr. Smoot's friendly loan, he was well prepared to go with proper dignity, and to make a presentable appearance among his fellow-legislators. He had but a hundred miles or so to travel, but that short journey carried him on into a new sphere of life and action.