ting out of unexpected difficulties. When, in 1860, the Ship of State seemed like to run aground hopelessly, it was his determination and ingenuity that averted total wreck. As in his youth he saved the flatboat, so in his mature years he

saved the nation.

The other event was that at New Orleans, where he saw with his own eyes some of the horrors of slavery. He never could tolerate a moral wrong. At a time when drinking was almost universal, he was a total abstainer. Though born in a slave state, he had an earnest and growing repugnance to slavery. Still, up to this time he had never seen much of its workings. At this time he saw a slave market—the auctioning off of human beings.

The details of this auction were so coarse and vile that it is impossible to defile these pages with an accurate and faithful description. Lincoln saw it all. He saw a beautiful mulatto girl exhibited like a race-horse, her "points" dwelt on, one by one, in order, as the auctioneer said, that "bidders might satisfy themselves whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not." One of his companions justly said slavery ran the iron into him then and there. His soul was stirred with a righteous indignation. Turn

ing to the others he exclaimed with a solemn oath: "Boys, if ever I get a chance to hit that thing [slavery] I'll hit it hard!"

He bided his time. One-third of a century later he had the chance to hit that thing. He redeemed his oath. He hit it hard.

CHAPTER VI.

DESULTORY EMPLOYMENTS.

To

:

UPON the arrival of the Lincoln family in Illinois, they had the few tools which would be considered almost necessary to every frontiersman : namely, a common ax, broad-ax, hand-saw, whipsaw. The mauls and wedges were of wood and were made by each workman for himself. this stock of tools may also be added a small supply of nails brought from Indiana, for at that period nails were very expensive and used with the strictest economy. By means of pegs and other devices people managed to get along without them.

When Abraham Lincoln went to New Salem it was (like all frontier towns) a promising place. It grew until it had the enormous population of about one hundred people, housed—or log-cabined —in fifteen primitive structures. The tributary country was not very important in a commercial sense. To this population no less than four general stores—that is, stores containing nearly

everything that would be needed in that community—offered their wares.

The town flourished, at least it lived, about through the period that Lincoln dwelt there, after which it disappeared.

Lincoln was ready to take any work that would get him a living. A neighbor advised him to make use of his great strength in the work of a blacksmith. He seriously thought of learning the trade, but was, fortunately for the country, diverted from doing so.

The success of the expedition to New Orleans had won the admiration of his employer, Denton Offutt, and he now offered Lincoln a clerkship in his prospective store. The offer was accepted partly because it gave him some time to read, and it was here that he came to know the two great poets, Burns and Shakespeare.

Offutt's admiration of the young clerk did him credit, but his voluble expression of it was not judicious. He bragged that Lincoln was smart enough to be president, and that he could run faster, jump higher, throw farther, and "wrastle" better than any man in the country. In the neighborhood there was a gang of rowdies, kind at heart but very rough, known as "the Clary's Grove boys." They took the boasting of

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Offutt as a direct challenge to themselves and eagerly accepted it. So they put up a giant by the name of Jack Armstrong as their champion and arranged a "wrastling" match. All went indifferently for a while until Lincoln seemed to be getting the better of his antagonist, when the boys" crowded in and interfered while Armstrong attempted a foul. Instantly Lincoln was furious. Putting forth all his strength he lifted Jack up and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. The crowd, in their turn, became angry and set out to mob him. He backed up against a wall and in hot indignation awaited the onset. Armstrong was the first to recover his good sense. Exclaiming, "Boys, Abe Lincoln's the best fellow that ever broke into the settlement," he held out his hand to Lincoln who received it with perfect good nature. From that day these boys never lost their admiration for him. He was their hero. From that day, too, he became the permanent umpire, the general peacemaker of the region. His good nature, his self-command, and his manifest fairness placed his decisions beyond question. His popularity was established once for all in the entire community.

There are some anecdotes connected with his work in the store which are worth preserving be