pened an account with
Slavery too. By and by they'll decide its fate."

Such was his faith in the common folk of America whose way of learning
and whose love of the right he knew as no man has known it.

In this connection the New Englander wrote in his diary:

* * * * *

"He has spent his boyhood in the South and his young manhood in the
North. He has studied the East and lived in the West. He is the people--I
sometimes think--and about as slow to make up his mind. As Isaiah says:
'He does not judge after the sight of his eyes neither reprove after the
hearing of his ears.' Abe has to think about it."

* * * * *

Many days thereafter Abe and Harry and Samson were out in the woods
together splitting rails and making firewood. Abe always took his book
with him and read aloud to Harry and Samson in the noon-hour. He liked to
read aloud and thought that he remembered better what he had read with
both eye and ear taking it in.

One day while they were at work Pollard Simmons came out to them and said
that John Calhoun the County Surveyor wanted Abe to be his assistant.

"I don't know how to survey," said Abe.

"But I reckon you can learn it," Simmons answered. "You're purty quick to
learn."

Abe thought a moment. Calhoun was a Democrat.

"Would I have to sacrifice any of my principles?" he asked.

"Nary a one," said Simmons.

"Then I'll try and see if I can get the hang of it," Abe declared. "I
reckon Mentor Graham could help me."

"Three dollars a day is not to be sneezed at," said Simmons.

"No, sir--not if you can get it honest," Abe answered. "I'm not so
careless with my sneezing as some men. Once when Eb Zane was out on the
Ohio in a row-boat Mike Fink the river pirate got after him. Eb had a ten
dollar gold piece in his pocket. For fear that he would be captured he
clapped it into his mouth. Eb was a good oarsman and got away. He was no
sooner out of danger than he fetched a sneeze and blew the gold piece
into the river. After that he used to say that he had sneezed himself
poor and that if he had a million dollars it wouldn't bother him to
sneeze 'em away. Sneezing is a form of dissipation which has not cost me
a cent so far and I don't intend to yield to it."

Immediately after that Abe got Flint and Gibson's treatise on surveying
and began to study it day and night under the eye of the kindly
schoolmaster. In about six weeks he had mas