"'Ah, yes,' he said, 'I do occupy a good position there, and I think I can get along with the way things are done there now. But these college-trained men, who have devoted their whole lives to study, are coming West, don't you see? And they study their cases as we never do. They have got as far as Cincinnati now. They will soon be in Illinois.' Another long pause; then stopping and turning towards me, his countenance suddenly assuming that look of strong determination which those who knew him best sometimes saw upon his face, he exclaimed, 'I am going home to study law! I am as good as any of them, and when they get out to Illinois I will be ready for them.'" While Mr. Lincoln was not a sensitive man in the ordinary sense of that term, he felt keenly his own deficiencies in education; nor did he lose this feeling when his ability as a statesman was recognized by the entire universe and he held the destiny of a nation in his grasp. Once, when a famous lawyer called at the White House and referred courteously to his eminent position at the bar, he replied, "Oh, I am only a mast-fed lawyer," referring to his limited education. "Mast" is a kind of food composed of acorns, grass, and similar natural substances which was commonly given to cattle and hogs in Indiana and other frontier States when he was a boy. Conscious of his deficiencies, he never ceased to be a student. Until the very day of his death he was eager to acquire knowledge, and no new subject was ever presented to him without exciting his inquisitiveness and determination to learn all there was to know about it. Of this characteristic he once remarked to a friend,-- "In the course of my law reading I constantly came upon the word demonstrate--I thought at first that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I consulted Webster's Dictionary. That told of certain proof, 'proof beyond the probability of doubt;' but I could form no sort of idea what sort of proof that was. "I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better results. You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said, 'Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means;' and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there until I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demonstrate meant, and went back to my law studies."