young men in New Salem, addicted to
petty gambling. He once related how Lincoln induced him to quit the
habit. Abe said to him one day:

"Billy, you ought to stop gambling with Estep." Billy made a lame
excuse:

"I'm ninety cents behind, and I can't quit until I win it back."

"I'll help you get that back," urged Lincoln, "if you'll promise me you
won't gamble any more."

The youth reflected a moment and made the required promise. Lincoln
continued:

"Here are some good hats, and you need a new one. Now, when Estep comes
again, you draw him on by degrees, and finally bet him one of these hats
that I can lift a forty-gallon barrel of whisky and take a drink out of
the bunghole."

Billy agreed, and the two clerks chuckled as they fixed the barrel so
that the bunghole would come in the right place to win the bet, though
the thing seemed impossible to Greene himself. Estep appeared in due
time, and after long parleying and bantering the wager was laid. Lincoln
then squatted before the barrel, lifted one end up on one knee, then
raised the other end on to the other knee, bent over, and by a Herculean
effort, actually succeeded in taking a drink from the bunghole--though
he spat it out immediately. "That was the only time," said Greene long
afterward, "that I ever saw Abraham Lincoln take a drink of liquor of
any kind." This was the more remarkable, as whisky was served on all
occasions--even passed around with refreshments at religious meetings,
according to Mrs. Josiah Crawford, the woman for whom Abe and Nancy had
worked as hired help. Much as Abe disapproved of drinking, he considered
that "the end justified the means" employed to break his fellow clerk of
the gambling habit.

HOW HE WON THE NAME OF "HONEST ABE"

Abe Lincoln could not endure the thought of cheating any one, even
though it had been done unintentionally. One day a woman bought a bill
of goods in Offutt's store amounting to something over two dollars. She
paid Abe the money and went away satisfied. That night, on going over
the sales of the day, Abe found that he had charged the woman six and
one-fourth cents too much. After closing the store, though it was late,
he could not go home to supper or to bed till he had restored that
sixpence to its proper owner. She lived more than two miles away, but
that did not matter to Abe Lincoln. When he had returned the money to
the astonished woman he walked back to the village with a long step and
a light