community, and of the general impression
that he was an unusually promising young man.]

LINCOLN STUDIES GRAMMAR.

As soon as the store was fairly under way Lincoln began to look about
for books. Since leaving Indiana, in March, 1830, he had had, in his
drifting life, little leisure or opportunity for study--though he had
had a great deal for observation. Nevertheless his desire to learn
had increased, and his ambition to be somebody had been encouraged.
In that time he had found that he really was superior to many of those
who were called the "great" men of the country. Soon after entering
Macon County, in March, 1830, when he was only twenty-one years old,
he had found he could make a better speech than at least one man who
was before the public. A candidate had come along where John Hanks and
he were at work, and, as John Hanks tells the story, the man made a
speech. "It was a bad one, and I said Abe could beat it. I turned down
a box, and Abe made his speech. The other man was a candidate--Abe
wasn't. Abe beat him to death, his subject being the navigation of
the Sangamon River. The man, after Abe's speech was through, took him
aside, and asked him where he had learned so much and how he could do
so well. Abe replied, stating his manner and method of reading, what
he had read. The man encouraged him to persevere."

He had found that people listened to him, that they quoted his
opinions, and that his friends were already saying that he was able
to fill any position. Offutt even declared the country over that "Abe
knew more than any man in the United States," and "some day he would
be President."

[Illustration: JOHN A. CLARY.

John A. Clary was one of the "Clary's Grove Boys." He was a son of
John Clary, the head of the numerous Clary family which settled in the
vicinity of New Salem in 1818. He was born in Tennessee in 1815 and
died in 1880. He was an intimate associate of Lincoln during the
latter's New Salem days.]

Under this stimulus Lincoln's ambition increased. "I have talked with
great men," he told his fellow-clerk and friend, Greene, "and I do not
see how they differ from others." He made up his mind to put himself
before the public, and talked of his plans to his friends. In order
to keep in practice in speaking he walked seven or eight miles to
debating clubs. "Practising polemics" was what he called the exercise.
He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects.
Grammar was what