CHAPTER XI.

A STEP UPWARD.

Stranded in New Salem-First Public Employment-Miller, Clerk, and Peace-keeper-A Wrestling Match-1831.

THE mill-dam across the Sangamon River, upon the perilous edge of which Mr. Offutt's flatboat stuck, to be rescued by Abraham Lincoln, is still in existence; but the little hamlet of New Salem has long since disappeared. The hand of time requires but little human aid in the destruction of a score or two of houses built of logs or of pine boards, the best of them at a cost of less than a hundred dollars.

New Salem, however, was something of a business place in the summer of the year 1831. The mill was a great help to it, and it was separated by twenty miles of prairie road from the crushing rivalry of Springfield. That city already contained at least a thousand inhabitants, and no neighboring settlement could hope to compete with it successfully.

The whole population of the prairie country was in a condition of continual drift and change, yet hardly any man could offer a good reason for his restlessness. Whole families floated hither and thither, they knew not why and scarcely how, drawing friends and connections after them.

A solitary, loose-footed laborer, without an ounce of property beyond the shabby clothes he stood in, was a fragment of human driftwood which might be cast ashore almost anywhere by the aimless eddies of such a social state.

Abraham Lincoln, hiring from job to job of uncertain work, was stranded at New Salem about midsummer of the year 1831. He had no definite business there, no settled occupation, no

him by name.

home, no special friends, although there were some who knew His first employment grew out of the fact that he could write; for that accomplishment was by no means general in New Salem. The "election" was held in August; but when the polls were opened the reception of votes was checked by the sad fact that but one "clerk" was present to record them, while the inexorable law demanded two. Worse than that, a search of the known residents of New Salem failed to discover a second candidate duly educated for the performance of his duties. There was the very tall stranger loitering around. It was not likely that he could use a pen, but they could ask him; and one of the "judges of election" approached him with,

"Mister, kin you write?"

"Well, yes, I reckon I can, a little."

"Will you take a hand as clerk of 'lection to-day?"

"Well, yes, if you want me. I'll try it on. Do the best I

can."

It was a curious experience for the stranded stranger. He was performing the first act of his life as a public functionary, and the power and office came to him because he was the one and only man who had the necessary education.

Mr. Denton Offutt had it in his mind to start a country store at New Salem, and Abe was in some hope of employment from him if the intention should be fulfilled: but it was not. Mr. Offutt's plans, like his flatboat enterprise, were a little uncertain in their beginnings. Meantime, however, a job turned up in the piloting of a flatboat down the Sangamon River in a flood. It was a task which called for nerve and skill as well as strength, for there were places where the swollen current carried the boat across prairie, two or three miles away from the regular channel, and all knowledge of the latter was of no account. There was a whole family on board with their household goods, bound for Texas, and their tall pilot steered them safely down the freshet, as far as his contract called for.

Then he left them in other hands and walked back to New Salem.

More loitering and waiting followed, with a process of getting acquainted with everybody, and at last Mr. Offutt's goods arrived. He added to them by purchasing the stock on hand of what would otherwise have been the rival establishment. He had kept his liking for his flatboat hero, and Abe was engaged as clerk and salesman of the new concern. It was a rise in life for him; one more round of the ladder he was climbing out of the miry bog in which he had been born.

Mr. Offutt was an enterprising man, and he now rented the mill itself from its owners, and put it under the especial charge of Abe, while a clerk named Green was assigned to duty at the store. Lincoln had tried his hand at many things, and now he was a miller, as if no point of life should be found at which he had not come into contact with the people he lived among. He mingled with them everywhere, being thoroughly one of them. He soon discovered that not even the woods of Indiana had developed a rougher, coarser, and in some respects a more vicious and degraded community. Fighting, drinking, gambling, riotous dissipation of all the ruder varieties, were the order of the day, and of almost every day. Abe's physical prowess once more stood him in good stead. It enabled him in time to set up as a sort of heavy-handed keeper of the peace: but this could not be, of course, until he had been tested against the local bully.

The boasts of his friends, headed by Mr. Offutt, shortly brought that matter about. The latter freely declared that Abe could outrun, throw, or whip any man in Sangamon County, and that he knew more than any other man alive, and would be President of the United States some day. He had reasons of his own for the faith that was in him; but over at Clary's Grove there was another man who imagined a large share at least of all that praise his own peculiar due. He too had enthusiastic admirers ready to do his boasting for him.

The "Clary's Grove Boys" were a set of unmitigated ruffians, and Jack Armstrong was their best man. From all accounts it is hard to guess who or what could have been their worst, and all peaceable people stood in dread of them.

There came one day a kind of boasting match between Offutt and Bill Clary, of Clary's Grove, and it could have but one result. Abe Lincoln and Jack Armstrong were pitted against each other for a wrestle, in spite of all the strong objections made by the former. That was not the sort of competition or success that Mr. Offutt's foreman was studying for, and he did his best to avoid it; but it was too late to escape, for the match had been definitely made.

The confidence of the Clary's Grove Boys in their champion was unbounded, and so was that of the public generally, so that the tide of betting and talk ran all in favor of Jack Armstrong, until the two antagonists were fairly clinched in the ring.

The struggle which followed was no common one, for the men were well matched, and, so long as the rules of fair wrestling were observed, neither succeeded in gaining any advantage. At last, both out of breath, they separated and stood looking at each other.

"Jack," said Lincoln, "let's quit. You can't throw me and I can't throw you."

The champion had been deeply stung by his unexpected failure, and now a chorus of biting remarks arose among his own friends and followers. He made no verbal reply, but rushed right in again in the hope of suddenly securing a "foul hold" and an unfair advantage. But he had already tried too far even the steady temper of his antagonist: in another instant, caught by the throat in a pair of iron hands, he was held out at arm's length, and shaken as if he had been a child.

Then the cry was, "A fight! A fight!" and the supporters of Mr. Offutt were by no means equal, in either numbers or bru

tality, to those of Bill Clary. The latter claimed the stakes, and they would perhaps have been surrendered to him but for the aroused condition of Abe Lincoln's temper. He had an abundance of it if any one would take the trouble to stir it up, and it refused always to go down rapidly. He now declared himself ready and willing to fight Armstrong or any of his fellows. The consequences might have been serious but for the arrival of Mr. Rutledge, the owner of the mill and the great man of New Salem. The noisy mob had all a mob's respect for well-clad wealth. The mill-owner was able to restore the broken peace, and there was no fighting done.

The episode was full of important consequences to Abraham Lincoln. His courage and prowess had been thoroughly tested and had made a deep impression upon the minds of his rough neighbors. He was in no danger of further challenges from any of them, and Jack Armstrong avowed himself the fast friend of the man who had given him so good a shaking. The further results were only a question of time, for the wrestling match which was not won by either of the contestants gained for Abe Lincoln a strong and devoted, if somewhat turbulent, constituency. Every member of the Clary's Grove gang had a vote, and with it a strong admiration for a man who could not only read and write, but could hold a bully at arm's length. The story of the "match" went far and wide, and its hero was thenceforth a man of note and influence in that community.

Thenceforward, moreover, the immediate neighborhood had a recognized and respected peacemaker, and became a more pleasant place of residence for men of quiet tastes. Not to such a degree, however, that an utter stranger would be wise in loitering here and there too much unless he were prepared to look out for his personal safety somewhat as Lincoln had done.

The new foreman of Offutt's mill found that his duties left him with time on his hands, and he did not propose to waste it.