Once a young man hoped to study law and he wrote to Lincoln for advice, who lived most of his adult life as a practicing lawyer. Lincoln replied, "If you make up your mind to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. Always keep in mind that your own decision to succeed is more important than any other thing."
Lincoln knew this because he had gone through it all. He had never, in his life，had more than a total of one year's schooling. And books? Lincoln once said he had walked to borrow every book fifty miles away from his home. A fire was usually kept going all night in the small house and he read by the light of it.
He walked twenty or thirty miles to hear a speaker and, returning home, he practiced his talks everywhere—in the fields, in the woods, before the crowds. He joined several societies and practiced speaking on the topics of the day.
Being short of confidence always troubled him. He was shy before women. Even when he was in love with Mary Todd, he used to sit there, nervous and silent, unable to find words, listening while she did the talking. Yet that was the man who, by practice and home study, made himself into a famous speaker with great eloquence(雄辩).
When he spoke of his own great painful experiences, he wrote, "If you make up your mind to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already."
