Abe Lincoln by Sterling North

Author:Sterling North [North, Sterling]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81414-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

8

Jack of All Trades

The store winked out.

A. LINCOLN

During the next five years, Lincoln was a storekeeper, postmaster, surveyor, state assemblyman, and newly licensed lawyer. In all of these ventures except the first he was successful. His business dealings in connection with the store were so unfortunate that, although he was penniless when he began, he was actually about a thousand dollars in debt when he left New Salem for Springfield in 1837.

Why the desire to be a merchant? Abe probably remembered the honorable position in the community held by the storekeeper James Gentry back in Indiana. Doubtless, too, he enjoyed the continual contacts across the counter with his neighbors and the chance it gave him to tell stories. Above all else, here was an opportunity to rise above manual labor, leisure to lie on the counter with his feet propped on the wall high above his head, reading every book on which he could lay his big, gnarled, work-hardened hands.

In later years Lincoln recalled that he was eager to remain in New Salem among friends who had treated him with “so much generosity.” For a time he thought of “learning the blacksmith trade—thought of trying to study law.” But he decided he could not succeed at that without a better education.

Out of work, and in need of keeping body and soul together, he was amazed when “a man offered to sell and did sell,” to Lincoln and to another as poor as himself, “an old stock of goods, upon credit.” They opened as merchants, but they did nothing but get deeper and deeper in debt.

The story of the store that “winked out” has been told so many times that it seems almost legendary—but the tale is true. Lincoln and his partner, William F. Berry, soon proved an unlikely pair of merchants. Berry drank deep from the whisky barrel. Lincoln drank deep from his books. Together they managed to destroy the business in a matter of months. But it was Honest Abe—the man who would walk miles to return an accidental overcharge of a few cents—who was left with all the debts when the store failed. After many years of labor he paid those debts to the last penny.

To meet his board bill at the Rutledge tavern, Lincoln was willing to take any sort of casual labor—splitting rails, husking corn, or clerking at the new store run by A. Y. Ellis. On May 7, 1833, he was appointed postmaster of New Salem, a part-time job that paid him perhaps fifty to seventy-five dollars a year, but that also allowed him the privilege of reading all the newspapers mailed to subscribers in the village.

Back in Indiana, Abe had been known as “a sort of newsboy,” reciting in summary all the news he could remember from the papers that he read so avidly. Eager for information about the world, national affairs, and political issues, Lincoln continued to devour the contents of such newspapers as the St. Louis Missouri Republican, the Louisville Journal, the Washington National Intelligencer, and the Springfield Sangamo Journal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.