Samuel Hill, the New Salem merchant;
James McGrady Rutledge, aged eighty-one years; John Potter, aged
eighty-seven years; and Thomas Watkins, aged seventy-one years--all
now living at Petersburg, Illinois. Mrs. Hill, a woman of more than
ordinary intelligence, did not become a resident of New Salem until
1835, the year in which she was married. Lincoln had then gone out
of business, but she knew much of his store. "Berry and Lincoln,"
she says, "did not keep any dry goods. They had a grocery, and I have
always understood they sold whiskey." Mr. Rutledge, a nephew of James
Rutledge the tavern-keeper, has a vivid recollection of the store.
He says: "I have been in Berry and Lincoln's store many a time. The
building was a frame--one of the few frame buildings in New Salem.
There were two rooms, and in the small back room they kept their
whiskey. They had pretty much everything, except dry goods--sugar,
coffee, some crockery, a few pairs of shoes (not many), some farming
implements, and the like. Whiskey, of course, was a necessary part of
their stock. I remember one transaction in particular which I had with
them. I sold the firm a load of wheat, which they turned over to the
mill." Mr. Potter, who remembers the morning when Lincoln, then a
stranger on his way to New Salem, stopped at his father's house
and ate breakfast, knows less about the store, but says: "It was a
grocery, and they sold whiskey, of course." Thomas Watkins says that
the store contained "a little candy, tobacco, sugar, and coffee, and
the like;" though Mr. Watkins, being then a small boy, and living a
mile in the country, was not a frequent visitor at the store.

LINCOLN APPOINTED POSTMASTER.

Business was not so brisk, however, in Berry and Lincoln's grocery,
even after the license was granted, that the junior partner did not
welcome an appointment as postmaster which he received in May, 1833.
The appointment of a Whig by a Democratic administration seems to have
been made without comment. "The office was too insignificant to make
his politics an objection," say the autobiographical notes. The duties
of the new office were not arduous, for letters were few, and their
comings far between. At that date the mails were carried by four-horse
post-coaches from city to city, and on horseback from central points
into the country towns. The rates of postage were high. A single-sheet
letter carried thirty miles or under cost six cents; thirty to eighty
miles