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Hawk War, and whose acquaintance Lincoln made at Beardstown, was also elected. Major Stuart had already conceived the highest opinion of the young man, and seeing much of him during the canvass for the election, privately advised him to study law. Stuart was himself engaged in a large and lucrative practice at Springfield.

Lincoln said he was poor-that he had no money to buy books, or to live where books might be borrowed or used. Major Stuart offered to lend him all he needed, and he decided to take the kind lawyer's advice, and accept his offer. At the close of the canvass which resulted in his election, he walked to Springfield, borrowed "a load" of books of Stuart, and took them home with him to New Salem.

Here he began the study of law in good earnest, though with no preceptor. He studied while he had bread, and then started out on a surveying tour to win the money that would buy more.

One who remembers his habits during this period. says that he went, day after day, for weeks, and sat under an oak tree near New Salem and read, moving around to keep in the shade as the sun moved. He was so much absorbed that some people thought and said he was crazy.

Not unfrequently he met and passed his best friends without noticing them. The truth was that he had found the pursuit of his life, and had become very much in earnest.

During Lincoln's campaign he possessed and rode a horse, to procure which he had quite likely sold his compass and chain, for, as soon as the canvass had closed, he sold the horse and bought these instruments,

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indispensable to him in the only pursuit by which he could make his living.

When the time for the assembly of the Legislature had arrived Lincoln dropped his law books, shouldered his pack, and, on foot, trudged to Vandalia, then the Capital of the State, about a hundred miles, to make his entrance into public life.

INCIDENT IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR.

An old Indian strayed, hungry and helpless, into the camp one day. The soldiers were conspiring to kill him as a spy.

A letter from General Cass, recommending him, for his past kind and faithful service to the whites, the trembling old savage drew from beneath the folds of his blankets; but failed in any degree to appease the wrath of the men who confronted him. "Make an example of him," they exclaimed; "the letter is a forgery, and he is a spy."

They might have put their threats into execution had not the tall form of their captain, his face swarthy with resolution and rage, interposed itself between them and their defenseless victim.

Lincoln's determined look and demand that it must not be done were enough. They sullenly desisted, and the Indian, unmolested, continued on his way.

COOL UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

At one time Major Hill charged Lincoln with mak. ing defamatory remarks about his wife.

Hill was insulting in his language to Lincoln, whe never lost his temper.

When he saw his chance to edge a word in, Lincoln denied emphatically using the language or anything like that attributed to him.

He entertained, he insisted, a high regard for Mrs. Hill, and the only thing he knew to her discredit was the fact that she was Major Hill's wife.

"THANK YOU, I NEVER DRINK."

When Lincoln was in the Black Hawk War as captain, the volunteer soldiers drank in with delight the jests and stories of the tall captain. Esop's Fables were given a new dress, and the tales of the wild adventures that he had brought from Kentucky and Indiana were many, but his inspiration was never stimulated by recourse to the whisky jug. When his grateful and delighted auditors pressed this on him he had one reply: "Thank you, I never drink it."

THE LINCOLN-SHIELDS DUEL.

The late General Shields was Auditor of the State of

Illinois in 1839. While he occupied this important office he was involved in an "affair of honor" with a Springfield lawyer-no less a personage than Abraham Lincoln. At this time, "James Shields, Auditor," was the pride of the young Democracy, and was considered a dashing fellow by all, the ladies included.

In the summer of 1842, the Springfield Journal contained some letters from the "Lost Township," by a

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