Lincoln did not gain any immediate eminence at the bar. His preliminary studies had been cursory and slight, and Stuart was then too much engrossed in politics to pay the unremitting attention to the law which that jealous mistress requires. He had been a candidate for Congress the year before, and had been defeated by W. L. May. He was a candidate again in 1838, and was elected over so agile an adversary as Stephen Arnold Douglas. His paramount interest in these canvasses necessarily prevented him from setting to his junior partner the example which Lincoln so greatly needed, of close and steady devotion to their profession. It was several years later that Lincoln found with Judge Logan the companionship and inspiration which he required, and began to be really a lawyer. During the first year or two he is principally remembered in Springfield as an excellent talker, the life and soul of the little gatherings about the county offices, a story- teller of the first rank, a good-natured, friendly fellow whom everybody liked and trusted. He relied more upon his influence with a jury than upon his knowledge of law in the few cases he conducted in court, his acquaintance with human nature being far more extensive than his legal lore. Lincoln was not yet done with Vandalia, its dinners of game, and its political intrigue. The archives of the State were not removed to Springfield until 1839, and Lincoln remained a member of the Legislature by successive reelections from 1834 to 1842. His campaigns were carried on almost entirely without expense. Joshua Speed told the writers that on one occasion some of the Whigs contributed a purse of two hundred dollars which Speed handed to Lincoln to pay his personal expenses in the canvass. After the election was over, the successful candidate handed Speed $199.25, with the request that he return it to the subscribers. "I did not need the money," he said. "I made the canvass on my own horse; my entertainment, being at the houses of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider, which some farm-hands insisted I should treat them to." He was called down to Vandalia in the summer of 1837, by a special session of the Legislature. The magnificent schemes of the foregoing winter required some repairing. The banks throughout the United States had suspended specie payments in the spring, and as the State banks in Illinois were the fiscal agents of the railroads and canals, the Governor called upon the law-makers to revise their own work, to legalize the suspension, and bring their improvement system within possible bounds. They acted as might have been expected: complied with the former suggestion, but flatly refused to touch their masterpiece. They had been glorifying their work too energetically to destroy it in its infancy. It was said you could recognize a legislator that year in any crowd by his automatic repetition of the