a man of his word, patiently bided their time, until, in the
course of long years, he paid, with interest, every cent of what
he used to call, in rueful satire upon his own folly, his
"National Debt."



III. LAWYER LINCOLN

Unlucky as Lincoln's attempt at storekeeping had been, it served
one good purpose. Indeed, in a way it may be said to have
determined his whole future career. He had had a hard struggle to
decide between becoming a blacksmith or a lawyer; and when chance
seemed to offer a middle course, and he tried to be a merchant,
the wish to study law had certainly not faded from his mind.

There is a story that while cleaning up the store, he came upon a
barrel which contained, among a lot of forgotten rubbish, some
stray volumes of Blackstone's "Commentaries," and that this lucky
find still further quickened his interest in the law. Whether
this tale be true or not it seems certain that during the time
the store was running its downward course from bad to worse, he
devoted a large part of his too abundant leisure to reading and
study of various kinds. People who knew him then have told how he
would lie for hours under a great oak-tree that grew just outside
the store door, poring over his book, and "grinding around with
the shade" as it shifted from north to east.

Lincoln's habit of reading was still further encouraged by his
being appointed postmaster of New Salem on May 7, 1833, an office