Some of his neighbors in New Salem were nonplussed by Lincoln’s resolute study of law. Before he began preparing himself for a career at the bar, he seemed a rather happy-go-lucky fellow. Parthena Hill told a journalist, “I don’t think Mr. Lincoln was overindustrious.… He didn’t do much. His living and his clothes cost little. He liked company, and would talk to everybody, and entertain them and himself.” Others remembered Lincoln in the period before his law studies “as a ‘shiftless’ young man, who worked at odd jobs,” and “a sort of loafer.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
(echo:: @ ⌗)