ress,"
AEsop's "Fables," The Bible, and Weems's "Life of Washington." In 1824
his father, in need of his assistance as a bread-winner, began to
instruct him in the carpenter trade. In 1825 he was employed at $6 a
month to manage a ferry across the Ohio River at Gentry's Landing, near
the mouth of Anderson Creek. His wages were paid to his father. The
first money he earned for himself came in the shape of two half-dollars
paid to him by two gentlemen whose trunks he transferred from the shore
to a passing steamer. In 1828 Mr. Gentry engaged him to go to New
Orleans on a flat-boat with a load of produce. In 1830 John Hanks, who
had removed from Kentucky to Illinois, wrote to Thomas Lincoln, urging
him to move to that State. Acting on the advice, Mr. Lincoln removed to
Illinois and settled at a point some ten miles west of Decatur. Abraham
Lincoln drove the ox team which hauled the household effects of the
family, and wearing a coon-skin cap, jean jacket, and a pair of buckskin
trousers, he entered the State poor, friendless, and unknown. Thirty
years later he left Illinois the foremost man in the nation, and known
to all the world. He assisted his father in clearing fifteen acres of
land, and split the rails with which to build the fence. Although of
age, he had no money, and having but a scant supply of clothing, made a
bargain with Nancy Miller to make him a pair of trousers. For each yard
of cloth required he split four hundred fence-rails, and as he was over
six feet in height it took fourteen hundred rails to pay for his
trousers. On April 19, 1831, he went to New Orleans with a flat-boat
load of pigs, corn, pork, and beef; the pigs refusing to walk, Lincoln
carried them aboard in his arms. John Hanks and Lincoln's half-brother,
John Johnston, accompanied him on the trip. While in New Orleans he
first saw men and women sold as slaves, and as every instinct of his
nature revolted at the spectacle, he said to John Hanks: "If ever I get
a chance to hit that institution, I'll hit it hard." Returning from New
Orleans, he went to New Salem to clerk in the store of Denton Offut.
While waiting for a shipment of goods he acted as clerk on a local
election board, and thus filled his first political position. During his
stay in New Salem he was frequently called on to exercise his great
strength in quelling disturbances, and inspired the turbulent element of
the place with a wholesome respect for his powers of muscular
persuasio