Across those great stretches of level and fertile land, ready to spring into richest gardens at the lightest touch of man, the Lincolns wended their toilsome way until they came to the meaner soil of the timber country on the Sangamon River, where they chose to pitch their new home. All the early settlers shunned the broad, open country as a desert. They had always lived in the woods, in the older states whence they came, and, though they saw the tall grass waving and the flowers rioting in bloom on these wide plains, they could not believe nature had been generous enough to clear the land for the use of man.

The Lincolns, therefore, as the rest, sought a place like that which they had left in Indiana, and no better. There they went to felling trees and hewing the logs for their cabin and ploughing a field among the stumps. Abraham's was the leading hand in this work, as well as in splitting the walnut rails for a fence.

With the first winter came a season of utter dreariness, celebrated in local history to this day as the winter of the deep snow. The snow lay three feet on a level, when a freezing rain followed and crusted it. For weeks the people could not leave their cabins. No doubt young Lincoln's desire for another life than that which had been his

from birth, was strengthened in this desolate period.

When spring came, he left his father's humble roof forever. He was twenty-two and had dutifully given to his parent all his labor through the years since childhood. He had helped him build his new home and clear and fence his new farm, as well as plant and harvest his first crop.

Now, with his axe over his shoulder and all his other belongings in a little bundle, he started out for himself. At first he worked about the neighborhood, splitting rails and doing whatever was given him to do. If he saw a book, he read it, and he amazed the rustics with his speechmaking on various subjects. He even ventured to reply to a political speaker, and in this, his first joint debate, he won not only the applause of the audience in the field, but the praise of his opponent as well.

While knocking about in this way, he happened upon a man who engaged him at fifty cents a day to go on a flatboat to New Orleans, with the promise of an added sum of money if the venture succeeded. He paddled the Sangamon in a canoe to the point where he fitted up the raft, on which he floated down the river until, unfortunately, it was stranded on a dam in front of New Salem. All the village flocked to the scene of the excitement, and the

wise men ashore offered their noisy advice to the

crew.

One member of that crew moved the crowd to laughter. He was a tall, gaunt, sad-faced young man. His coat was ragged, his hat was battered; and his trousers of torn and patched homespun, with nearly half of one of the legs missing, completed a picture that was forlorn indeed. He neither looked at the grinning people on the bank, nor said a word in reply to their gibes. He had thought out in his own mind a way to get over the dam. He met the emergency without turning to any one for advice, and in due time the boat floated onward and from view, the grotesque figure of the youthful Lincoln standing on the deck, pole in hand.

After the cargo of corn and hogs had been landed and sold in New Orleans, Lincoln and John Hanks went about the city to see the sights. One of those sights made an impression on Lincoln's mind which the years did not efface and to which in after time he never could refer without emotion. It was a slave auction, and, as he came to it, he saw a young woman standing on the block, while the auctioneer shouted her good points. He saw her driven around the mart, exhibited and examined as if she were a horse, in that circle of sordid dealers in human flesh. This was slavery in its ugliest aspect, and

Lincoln was stirred to the depths of his nature. "If I ever get a chance to hit this thing," he declared to John Hanks, according to the story which the latter has given to history, "I'll hit it hard.”

From New Orleans, the flatboatmen returned by steamer to St. Louis. Thence Lincoln walked across Illinois to his father's farm. After visiting his family there, he went on his way until he came again to New Salem, where his boat had stuck on the dam. His employer in the boating enterprise had decided to open a store in that village of twen log houses and one hundred population, and Linco1,! was to help him. He walked into the little settlement to find that the merchant and his merchandise had not yet arrived. Every one remembered him as the silent, strange, and ingenious young man who had freed the flatboat from its obstruction, and his easy good nature and droll remarks won him a hearty welcome among the people, who, a few months before, had jeered at him from the river bank.

Another distinction awaited him. An election was to be held, and penmanship not being a common accomplishment in New Salem, Lincoln was asked if he could write a good hand. He answered he "could make a few rabbit tracks on paper," and he was selected to help the clerk of the election,

a post which brought him in touch with all the voters and which also brought him a small but needed sum of money. The stories he told at the polls that day increased the popular favor in which he was held, and half a hundred years later old men, with smiling satisfaction, retold them to a new generation.

At last the new store was opened. The ambition of the owner was not content with this one venture, nd he bought the mill as well. Lincoln was placed

charge of both businesses, for his employer had unlimited faith in him and his all-round ability. He boasted that his clerk was the best man in New Salem and could beat any one, fighting, wrestling, or running. The villagers were willing to admit, of one accord, that the young stranger was a mighty clever fellow, but the sweeping assertion of the merchant led to more or less argument, and was looked upon by some as a challenge.

The Clary's Grove boys, a generous parcel of rowdies," who "could trench a pond, dig a bog, build a house," who "could pray and fight, make a village, or create a state," were open were open doubters. They even risked $10 in a bet with the merchant that their chief bully, Jack Armstrong, was a better man than his clerk. Lincoln held back. He had

no desire to fight.