William H. Herndon, Jesse William Weik, Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Etiam in minimis major, The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln by William H. Herndon, for twenty years his friend and Jesse William Weik

[121] engrossed in calculations, and only ceased when her mother drove them out after a fresh supply of wood for the fire. Meanwhile Lincoln was keeping up his law studies. “He studied to see the subject-matter clearly,” says Graham, “and to express it truly and strongly. I have known him to study for hours the best way of three to express an idea.” He was so studious and absorbed in his application at one time, that his friends, according to a statement made by one¹ of them, “noticed that he was so emaciated we feared he might bring on mental derangement.” It was not long, however, until he had mastered surveying as a study, and then he was sent out to work by his superior — Calhoun. It has-never been denied that his surveys were exact and just, and he was so manifestly fair that he was often chosen to settle disputed questions of corners and measurements. It is worthy of note here that, with all his knowledge of lands and their value and the opportunities that lay open to him for profitable and safe investments, he never made use of the information thus obtained from official sources, nor made a single speculation on his own account. The high value he placed on public office was more fully emphasized when as President, in answer to a delegation of gentlemen who called to press the claims of one of his warm personal friends for an important office, he declined on the ground that “he did not regard it as just to ”