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He had mentioned to the aforesaid Mentor Graham his "notion to study English grammar," and had been introduced to a work called "Kirkham's Grammar," which by a walk of some miles he could borrow from a neighbour. This he would read, lying full length on the counter with his head on a parcel of calico. At other odd times he would work away at arithmetic.
To her this was the dawn of that new day, in which the Methodist church rivals all others in her institutions of learning. The good time of inspiration was slipping away. What wonder that she clutched it as Jacob did his angel? There in that house she had for long years been an oracle to inspired men, and now to see God's Spirit displaced by Kirkham's grammar was rank infidelity.
The gas was out and they were mounting the stairs, arms entwined, warm young flesh on warm young flesh. "Isn't he a thoroughbred, isn't he a gem!" Chrystie chanted. "I'd like to go to Mrs. Kirkham's tomorrow, climb up her front stairs on my knees and knock my forehead on the sill of her parlor door." "Did you really like him?
Harris said that his sort of lapse is to be found in every copy of every newspaper that has ever been printed in English, and in almost all of our books. He said he had observed it in Kirkham's grammar and in Macaulay. Harris believed that milk-teeth are commoner in men's mouths than those "doubled-up haves." That changed the subject to dentistry.
Kirkham's contemporaries, withered and sere in contrast with her lily-pure freshness. In the entr'actes the hostess recalled the opera house in its heyday when the Bonanza Kings occupied their boxes with the Bonanza Queens beside them, when everyone was rich, and all the women wore diamonds.
The crystal trimmings of her bodice gave a responsive gleam, and looking down she was aware of her gala array. She slipped out of it, put on a morning dress, and denuded her hair of its shining ornament. It seemed long ago, in another life, that she had sat in Mrs. Kirkham's box, rejoicing in her costly trappings, glad to be admired.
The nights Lincoln spent in Gentryville lying on the floor in front of the fire figuring on the fire-shovel, the hours he passed in poring over the Statutes of Indiana, the days he wrestled with Kirkham's Grammar, alone made the mastery of Flint and Gibson possible. His struggle with Flint and Gibson made easier the volumes he borrowed from Major Stuart's law library.
"That'll do, Jack, we can't handle any more." As Lorry turned away she heard his desperate rejoinder: "Yes, we got it out here, but how in hell are we goin' to get it any farther?" After that she went to Mrs. Kirkham's. There was no reason to expect news of Chrystie there, except that the old lady was a friend, had been a support and help on occasions less tragic than this.
In his duties at the store and his work at the mill, in his study of Kirkham's "Grammar," and educational conversations with Mentor Graham, in the somewhat rude but frank and hearty companionship of the citizens of New Salem and the exuberant boys of Clary's Grove, Lincoln's life for the second half of the year 1831 appears not to have been eventful, but was doubtless more comfortable and as interesting as had been his flatboat building and New Orleans voyage during the first half.
Kirkham's, but was met with a refusal he saw there was no use combating. Early night found them in a plaza on a hilltop, moving from group to group. He had a memory of her never to be forgotten, walking ahead of him, copper-bright, as she fronted the blazing light, black against it, bending to look at a half-hidden face, kneeling beside a covered shape, outstretched in a stupor of sleep.
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