went at it in good earnest. He never studied with anybody." He seems
to have thrown himself into the work with an almost impatient ardor.
As he tramped back and forth from Springfield, twenty miles away, to
get his law-books, he read sometimes forty pages or more on the way.
Often he was seen wandering at random across the fields, repeating
aloud the points in his last reading. The subject seemed never to be
out of his mind. It was the great absorbing interest of his life. The
rule he gave twenty years later to a young man who wanted to know how
to become a lawyer, seems to have been the one he practised.[4]

Having secured a book of legal forms, he was soon able to write deeds,
contracts, and all sorts of legal instruments; and he was frequently
called upon by his neighbors to perform services of this kind. "In
1834," says Daniel Green Burner, Berry and Lincoln's clerk, "my
father, Isaac Burner, sold out to Henry Onstott, and he wanted a deed
written. I knew how handy Lincoln was that way, and suggested that we
get him. We found him sitting on a stump. 'All right,' said he, when
informed what we wanted. 'If you will bring me a pen and ink and a
piece of paper I will write it here.' I brought him these articles,
and, picking up a shingle and putting it on his knee for a desk, he
wrote out the deed." As there was no practising lawyer nearer than
Springfield, Lincoln was often employed to act the part of advocate
before the village squire, at that time Bowling Green. He realized
that this experience was valuable, and never, so far as known,
demanded or accepted a fee for his services in these petty cases.

Justice was sometimes administered in a summary way in Squire Green's
court. Precedents and the venerable rules of law had little weight.
The "Squire" took judicial notice of a great many facts, often going
so far as to fill, simultaneously, the two functions of witness and