Herndon said: "On the road to and from Springfield he would read and recite from the book he carried open in his hand, and claimed to have mastered forty pages of Black|stone during the first day after his return from Stuart's of|fice. At New Salem he frequently sat barefooted under the shade of a tree near the store, poring over a volume of Chitty or Blackstone, sometimes lying on his back, putting his feet up the tree."
As Lincoln applied himself to books and worked less with his hands, some of his New Salem friends, unable to under|stand his ambition, accused him of laziness. Russell Godbey, seeing him stretched out on a woodpile with a book before him, asked what he was reading. "I am not reading," replied Lincoln, "I am studying law." "Law," exclaimed Godbey, "Good God A'mighty!" and walked on.
In November Lincoln interrupted his studies to prepare for the session of the Legislature. Borrowing $200 from Cole|man Smoot for clothes, traveling expenses and the payment of his most pressing debts, he was ready to leave for Van|dalia, the state capital. Before his departure, a meeting of citizens of Sangamon County, held at the courthouse in Springfield, on November 22, 1834, elected him and ten others delegates to a State Education Convention to be held at Vandalia on December 5.
Lincoln traveled to Vandalia by stage, arriving in time for the opening of the session on December 1.44 Vandalia, in 1834, was far from prepossessing. Its hundred-odd buildings, mostly log cabins, housed a population of about 600. Vis|itors were accommodated in "the very large tavern house, called the Vandalia Inn"—it had a dining room 40x20 and thirteen lodging rooms—"and the extensive houses of Cols. Black, Blackford, Remann and Leidig." The House met on the first floor and the Senate on the second floor of the dilapidated two-story brick State House, erected by the citizens of the town in 1824. Two weekly newspapers, one Whig, the other Democratic, reported the political news.
