“You propose to turn night into day?” responded Graham, inquiringly. “Too much of such business will wear you out.”

“I’ll risk it if I can get a grammar,” replied Abraham. “The trouble is to find a grammar about here.”

“I know where there is one,” said Graham.

“Where?”

“Six miles from here, at Vaner’s, is a copy of Kirkham’s Grammar.”

“I’ll buy or borrow it before I’m much older,” remarked Abraham. “The time may come when I may want to use it.”

“If you ever expect to go before the public in any capacity, it will be a good thing for you,” responded Graham. At this time Graham had inferred from certain remarks of Abraham that he was looking forward to a more public career.

The result of this interview was that Abraham walked six miles and borrowed the grammar, the study of which he commenced at once, improving leisure moments in the store, and sitting up late at night to pursue his task.

The grammar rather interfered with the good time young men had with Abraham in the store. Instead of spending leisure moments in entertaining the company, Kirkham’s Grammar entertained him. Lamon says, “Sometimes, when business was not particularly brisk, he would lie under a shade-tree in front of the store, and pore over the book; at other times a customer would find him stretched on the counter intently engaged in the same way. But the store was a bad place for study; and he was often seen quietly slipping out of the village, as if he wished to avoid observation, when, if successful in getting off alone, he would spend hours in the woods, ‘mastering a book,’ or in a state of profound abstraction. He kept up his old habit of sitting up late at night; but, as lights were as necessary to his purpose as they were expensive, the village cooper permitted him to sit in his shop, where he burnt the shavings, and kept a blazing fire to read by when every one else was in bed. The Greens lent him books; the schoolmaster gave him instructions in the store, on the road, or in the meadows; every visitor to New Salem who made the least pretensions to scholarship was waylaid by Abe, and required to explain something which he could not understand. The result of it all was, that the village and the surrounding country wondered at his growth in knowledge, and he soon became as famous for the goodness of his understanding as for the muscular power of his body, and the unfailing humour of his talk.”

Kirkham’s Grammar appears to have given him a new impulse after knowledge; and his companions felt that they lost considerable enjoyment in consequence. Some of them had a poor opinion of Kirkham.

“Studyin’ grammar yit,” remarked Alley, in a contemptuous way.

“Yes; I want to know something about it. I never did.”

“Nor I, and that ain’t the worst on’t;” and Alley laughed as he said it.

“Well, I intend to know a little of it,” added Abraham. “It is rather dry, but I am determined to master it, if I can. I want, at least, to discover whether I am a common noun or not.”

“You’re an uncommon noun, Abe,” said Alley, meaning to compliment his friend, at the same time that he got off a pun.

“Your word for it.”

“Of course, my word for it. But I am quite sure that if there is anything in that book you will get it out.”