d discursive sort of merchant, with more irons in the fire than he could well manage. He wanted to take a flat-boat and carg

from "Congress land," and soon had a serviceable craft afloat, with which they descended the current of the Sangamon to New Salem, a little village which seems to have been born for the occasion, as it came into existence just before the arrival of Lincoln, nourished for seven years while he remained one of its citizens, and died soon after he went away. His introduction to his fellow-citizens was effected in a peculiar and somewhat striking manner. Offutt's boat had come to serious embarrassment on Rutledge's mill-dam, and the unwonted incident brought the entire population to the water's edge. They spent a good part of the day watching the hapless flat-boat, resting midships on the dam, the forward end in the air and the stern taking in the turbid Sangamon water. Nobody knew what to do with the disaster

F LINCOLN'S INVENTION,

INGT

FAC-SIMILE OF DRAWING

e: Lamon

hing much, was silent, looked bad. I can say, knowing it, that it was on this trip that he formed his opinion of slavery. It run its iron in him then and there, May, 1831. I have heard him say so often." The sight of men in chains was intolerable to him. Ten years after this he made another journey by water with his friend Joshua Speed, of Kentucky. Writing to Speed about it after the lapse of fourteen years, he says: "In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-w

to us an idle waste of labor. These sentiments came with the first awakening of his mind and conscience, and were roused into

e monument erected by his grandson, the Hon. Robert T. Lincoln.] at the age of seventy-three years, after a life which, though not successful in any material or worldly point of view, was probably far happier than that of his illustrious son, being unvexed by enterprise or ambition. Abraham never lost sight of his parents. He continued to aid and befriend them in every way, even when he could ill afford it, and when his

mes when I have helped you a little, you have said to me, "We can get along very well now," but in a very s

ill you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty, and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to

his, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this I do not mean you should go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines in California; but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home, in Coles County. Now, if you will do this you will soon be out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place

erse in statement, which has the unusual merit of

LLE, Nov

long anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year, and what you really want is to sell the land, get the money, and spend it. Part with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half you will get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now, I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, and particul

ned with the enervating malaria of the Western woods, as all his fellows were, and the consequences of it were seen in his character and conduct to the close of his life. But he had, what very few of them possessed any glimmering notion of, a fixed and inflexible will to suc

everal of them have given that description of him. He did one day's work acting as clerk of a local election, a lettered loafer being pretty sure of employment on such an occasion. [Footnote: Mrs. Lizzie H. Bell writes of this incident: "My father, Menton Graham, was on that day, as usual, appointed to be a clerk, and Mr. McNamee, who was to be the other, was sick and failed to come. They were looking around for a man to fill his place when my father noticed Mr. Lincoln and asked if he could write. He answered that 'he could make a few rabbit tracks.'"] He also piloted a boat down the Sangamon for

be made disagreeably evident to his clerk. He admired Abraham beyond measure, and praised him beyond prudence. He said that Abe knew more than any man in the United States; and he was certainly not warranted in making such an assertion, as his own knowledge of the actual state

MAP OF NEW SALE

an his inoffensive good-nature. But the loud admiration of Offutt gave them umbrage. It led to dispute, contradictions, and finally to a formal banter to a wrestling-match. Lincoln was greatly averse to all this "wooling and pulling," as he called it. But Offutt's indiscretion had made it necessary for him to show his mettle. Jack Armstrong, the leading bully of the gang, was selected to throw him, and expected an easy victory. But he soon found himself in different hands from any he had heretofore engaged with. Seeing he could not manage the tall stranger, his friends swarmed in, and by kicking and tripping nearly succeeded in getting Lincoln down. At this, as has been said of another hero, "the spirit of Odin entered into him," and putting forth his whole strength, he held the pride of Clary's Grove in his a

unity where his lot was cast. He became from that moment, in a certain sense, a personage, with a name and standing of his own. The verdict of Clary's Grove was unanimous that he was "the cleverest fellow that h

ced fac-simile is from the Exercise Book presented by William H. Herndon to the Keyes

titution before he slept. On another occasion, after weighing and delivering a pound of tea, he found a small weight on the scales. He immediately weighed out the quantity of tea of which he had innocently defrauded his customer and went in search of her, his sensitive conscience not permitting any delay. To show that the young merchant was not too good for this world, the same writer gives an incident of his shop-keeping experience of a different character. A rural bully having made himself especially offensive one day, when women were present, by loud profanity, Lincoln r

soon devolved upon him by general consent. Whenever old feuds blossomed into fights by Offutt's door, or the chivalry of Clary's Grove attempted in its energetic way to take the conceit out of some stranger, o

r father's name is as given in the text.] Graham, the schoolmaster, in regard to it, and learning the whereabouts of a vagrant "Kirkham's Grammar," he set off at once and soon returned from a walk of a dozen miles with the coveted prize. He devoted himself to the new study with that peculiar intensity of application which always remained his most valuable facu

team on the breaking up of the ice. He asked that he might be met at the mouth of the river by ten or twelve men, having axes with long handles, to cut away the overhanging branches of the trees on the banks. From this moment there was great excitement,- public meetings, appointment of committees, appeals for subscriptions, and a scattering fire of advertisements of goods and freight to be bargained for,-which sustained the prevailing interest. It was a day of hope and promise when the advertisement reached Springfield from Cincinnati that "the splendid upper-cabin steamer Talisman" would positively start for the Sangamon on a given day. As the paper containing this joyous intelligence also complained that no mail had reached Springfield from the east for three weeks, it is easy to understand the desire for more rapid and regular communications. From week to week the progress of the Talisman, impeded by bad weather and floating ice, was faithfully recorded