Mr. Lincoln was often annoyed by "company." His quarters at the tavern afforded him little privacy, and the shade of the tree in front of the grocery was scarcely a sufficiently secluded situation for the purposes of an ardent student. There were too many people to wonder and laugh at a man studying law with "his feet up a tree;" too many to worry him for the stories and jokes which it was supposed he could furnish on demand. For these reasons it became necessary that he should "retire to the country occasionally to rest and study." Sometimes he went to James Short's on the Sand Ridge; sometimes to Minter Graham's; sometimes to Bowlin Greenes; sometimes to Jack Armstrong's, and as often, perhaps, to Able's or Row Herndon's. All of these men served him faithfully and signally at one time and another, and to all of them he was sincerely attached. When Bowlin Greene died, in 1842, Mr. Lincoln, then in the enjoyment of great local reputation, undertook to deliver a funeral oration over the remains of his beloved friend; but, when he rose to speak, his voice was choked with deep emotion: he stood a few moments, while his lips quivered in the effort to form the words of fervent praise he sought to utter, and the tears ran down his yellow and shrivelled cheeks. Some of those who came to hear him, and saw his tall form thus sway in silence over the body of Bowlin Greene, say he looked so helpless, so utterly bereft and pitiable, that every heart in the audience was hushed at the spectacle. After repeated efforts, he found it impossible to speak, and strode away, openly and bitterly sobbing, to the widow's carriage, in which he was driven from the scene. Mr. Herndon's papers disclose less than we should like to know concerning this excellent man: they give us only this burial scene, with the fact that Bowlin Greene had loaned Mr. Lincoln books from their earliest acquaintance, and on one occasion had taken him to his home, and cared for him with the solicitude of a devoted friend through several weeks of great suffering and peril. The circumstances of the attempted eulogy are mentioned here to show the relations which subsisted between Mr. Lincoln and some of the benefactors we have enumerated. But all this time Mr. Lincoln had a living to make, a running board-bill to pay, and nothing to pay it with. He was, it is true, in the hands of excellent friends, so far as the greater part of his indebtedness was concerned; but he was industrious by nature, and wanted to be working, and paying as he went. He would not have forfeited the good opinion of those confiding neighbors for a lifetime of ease and luxury. It was therefore a most happy thing for him, and he felt it to be so, when he attracted the attention of John Calhoun, the surveyor of Sangamon County.