Lincoln became Major Stuart’s law-partner, and for many years he alternated between petty lawsuits and his more profitable work as a surveyor. His sincerity, shrewd humor, fairness and hearty hand-shaking qualities drew friends to him wherever he went. His long, almost ludicrous figure, with its trousers short of the shoetops by several inches; his stooping shoulders and shriveled, sunken, melancholy face, were not associated with the distinction, romance and tragic dignity which history has given to all that belongs to him. But his very spraddling awkwardness, the picturesque vernacular in which he told his countryside parables, coarse and satirical though they sometimes were; the humble spirit in which the lawyer-surveyor-politician would do odd jobs or chores to help a neighbor or earn a dollar, gave him added political strength with a frontier people who loved plain men. He does not understand Lincoln who thinks of him as a guileless, innocent frontiersman, raised by accident from a log-cabin to direct a mighty war and shape the policy of a nation. He was a sagacious, observant, natural politician, ambitious but honest. His law-partner, Mr. Herndon, has made that plain. Horace White, who knew Lincoln in his days of political campaigning, has written of him: “He was as ambitious of earthly honors as any man of his time. Furthermore, he was an adept at log-rolling or any political game that did not involve falsity.... Nobody knew better how to turn things to advantage politically, and nobody was readier to take such advantage, provided it did not involve dishonorable means. He could not cheat the people out of their votes any more than out of their money. The Abraham Lincoln that some people have pictured to themselves, sitting in his dingy law office, working over his cases till the voice of duty roused him, never existed. If this had been his type he never would have been called at all.” It helps one to realize the man who afterwards roused the soul of the Republic to resist the degradation of slavery and the shock of war to read what he wrote from Washington to Mr. Herndon in 1848: “Now, as to the young men, you must not wait to be brought forward by the older men. For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men? You young men get together and form a Rough and Ready club, and have regular meetings and speeches. Take in everybody that you can get.... As you go along, gather up the shrewd, wild boys about town, whether just of age or just a little under. Let every one play the part he can play best--some speak, some sing, and all halloo.”