Lincoln received no more teaching, but continued his reading and study until his family removed to Illinois. When he went to New Salem, after he had made his second voyage to New Orleans, and was waiting for Denton Offutt to open his store, a local election was held. One of the clerks of election being unable to attend, Menton Graham, the other clerk, who was also the village school-master, asked Lincoln if he could write. "I can make a few rabbit tracks," was the reply, and upon that admission he was sworn into his first office. Thus began one of the most useful friendships he ever enjoyed, for Graham was an intelligent and sympathetic friend who inspired the future President with ambition, nourished his appetite for knowledge, loaned him books, assisted him in his studies, heard him recite, corrected his compositions, and was his constant companion while he was clerking in Offutt's store. One day Graham told him that he ought to study grammar, and the next morning Lincoln walked six miles to a neighboring town to obtain a copy of Kirkham's "Grammar." This volume was found in his library after his death. It was Graham, too, who in six weeks taught him the science of surveying after Lincoln was appointed deputy to John Calhoun. From none of his many friends did he receive more valuable counsel and assistance. After he was admitted to the bar and became a member of the Legislature, he continued a regular course of study, including mathematics, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, literature, and other branches, devoting a certain number of hours to it every day. He followed this rule even after his marriage, and several years after his return from Congress he joined a German class which met in his office two evenings a week. His early friends have always contended that his devotion to study hastened the failure of the mercantile enterprise which caused him so much anxiety and left the burden of debt upon his shoulders which he carried so many years; for when he should have been attending to the store and watching the dissolute habits of his partner, he was absorbed in his books. His ambition to be a lawyer was stimulated by a curious incident that occurred soon after he went into partnership with Berry. He related it himself in these words: