AL had an urgency to become a lawyer in 1834 and self-studied to become one.
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 55
Much of the time as he read, he sat, barefoot, propped against a tree, and then, for variety, he would lie on his back and rest his long legs on the tree trunk . . . Behind Lincoln's urgency to become a lawyer there was now a new force: he was romantically involved.