In response to proposal that he take young man into his office as student, Lincoln writes James T. Thornton: "I am absent altogether too much to be a suitable instructor for a law-student. When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has, and has already been doing for himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructer. That is precisely the way I came to the law." Abraham Lincoln to James T. Thornton, 2 December 1858, CW, 3:344.