The site of the town where Lincoln spent the last three years of the period covered in this portion of his biography is now a desolate waste. A gentleman who visited the spot during the summer of 1885 thus describes the mournful scene: "From the hill where I sit, under the shade of three trees whose branches make one, I look out over the Sangamon river and its banks covered apparently with primeval forests. Around are fields overgrown with weeds and stunted oaks. It was a town of ten or twelve years only. It began in 1824 and ended in 1836. Yet in that time it had a history which the world will not let die as long as it venerates the memory of the noble liberator and martyr President, Abraham Lincoln." CHAPTER III Lincoln's Beginning as a Lawyer--His Early Taste for Politics--Lincoln and the Lightning-Rod Man--Not an Aristocrat--Reply to Dr. Early--A Manly Letter--Again in the Illinois Legislature--The "Long Nine"--Lincoln on His Way to the Capital--His Ambition in 1836--First Meeting with Douglas--Removal of the Illinois Capital--One of Lincoln's Early Speeches--Pro-Slavery Sentiment in Illinois--Lincoln's Opposition to Slavery--Contest with General Ewing--Lincoln Lays out a Town--The Title "Honest Abe." Abraham Lincoln's career as a lawyer covered a period of a quarter of a century, beginning about 1834 or '35, and ending with his election to the Presidency, in November, 1860. When he began his professional life he was an obscure and unpromising youth of twenty-five, with but little learning and fewer accomplishments, and without advantages of social influence or wealthy friends. Step by step, with patient industry and unflinching determination, he climbed the ladder of professional advancement until he stood among the foremost lawyers of the West. He had, indeed, won a national reputation; and when he laid aside his law books, a mature man of fifty, it was to enter upon the great honors and responsibilities of the Presidency of the American Republic. Lincoln was devoted to his profession, and his success in it was earned by hard and constant application. But his natural taste for politics led him to take a full share in the activities of political life. He had already served a term in the Illinois Legislature (1834-35), and so well satisfied were his constituents that they renominated him for the succeeding term. In the canvass which followed he distinguished himself as a stump-speaker; showing, by his tact and ability, by the skill and ingenuity with which he met his opponents in debate, by his shrewdness in attack and readiness in retort, how much he had profited by the training of the previous years.