“Well, this will make business enough for you, and it needs a long-legged, tough, wiry fellow like you to do it well. This is a great country for surveyors.”

“But shall I not need to take some lessons of you in the field when I get through the study?”

“It will be a capital idea, and you are welcome to all I can aid you any time you will come where I am. It will give you a sweat to keep up with me.”

“Perhaps so,” replied Lincoln, looking very much as if he did not believe it. The actual experiment proved that the sweat was given to the other party.

Lincoln took Flint and Gibson, and went to Minter Graham’s, the schoolmaster, out of the village, and spent six weeks in close study. Then, after a few lessons in the field with Calhoun, he set up as surveyor, and soon found plenty of business, and good pay; and his friend Green concluded the chance of his making a lawyer was lost. “The accuracy of his surveys was seldom, if ever, questioned. Disputes regarding ‘corners’ and ‘lines’ were frequently submitted to his arbitration; and the decision was invariably accepted as final.”

When Abraham had leisure time, at this period of his life, he made himself very useful. His sympathy for the unfortunate, needy, and suffering grew stronger from year to year. That tumultuous element of society that prevailed so alarmingly when he first went to New Salem he denounced more and more. When troubles arose between two or more parties, he would start up and say, “Let’s go and stop it.” Jack Armstrong had not lost altogether his love of cruel sport, such as he indulged in when the “Clary Grove Boys” were in power; and he bargained with a drunken fellow by the name of Jordan, to allow Jack to put him into a hogshead and roll him down New Salem hill, as once the “Boys” did with Scanlon and Solomon Spears. Jack was to give the fellow a gallon of whiskey, expecting to get more than the value of several gallons of the vile stuff in fun out of the operation. When Jack had the hogshead ready at the top of the hill, and his victim was waiting to be headed up within, Abraham, who had heard of the affair, came rushing to the scene of action.

“Jack!” he shouted at the top of his voice, “stop that game forthwith! No more such rascally tricks in New Salem.”

Jack cowered and looked cheap. “You’ll send Jordan into eternity before he gets to the foot of the hill,” Abraham continued. “You must stop such cruelty, or you’ll feel my long arms around you.”

“Only a little fun,” answered Jack.

“Fun!” exclaimed Abraham. “There’ll be no more such fun in New Salem so long as I live here.” And there was not. Jack was not cruel, and he was one of Abraham’s close friends; and so was his wife, Hannah. She said, a few years ago: “Abe would come out to our house about three miles, drink milk eat mush, corn-bread, and butter, bring the children candy, and rock the cradle while I got him something to eat. … He would tend babies, and do anything to accommodate anybody.”

On a cold winter day he saw Ab Trent cutting up an old house for Mr. Hill into firewood. Ab was barefooted, and shivered with the cold.

“What do you get for that job?” Abraham inquired.

“One dollar,” replied Ab; “I want a pair of shoes,” and he pointed to his almost frozen feet.

“Well, give me your axe,” continued Abraham, seizing it, “and you clear to the house where it is warm.”

Ab “cleared,” glad to put his bare feet to a fire, and Abraham cut up the “house” so quickly, that “Ab and the owner were both amazed when they saw it done.”