oonville to attend court and
listen to the lawyers.

At nineteen he was six feet and two inches tall, weighed one hundred and
fifty pounds, had long arms and legs, slender body, large and awkward
hands and feet, but not a large head. He is pictured as wearing
coon-skin cap, linsey-woolsey shirt, and buckskin breeches that were
often too short. He said that his father taught him to work but never
taught him to love it--but he did work hard and without complaining. He
was said to do much more work than any ordinary man at splitting rails,
chopping, mowing, ploughing, doing everything that he was asked to do
with all his might. It was at this age that he went on the first trip
with a flat boat down to New Orleans. This was an interesting adventure;
and there had been sorrows, also; his sister Sarah had married and died
in child-birth.

In the spring of 1830 the roving spirit of Thomas Lincoln felt the call
of the West and they set out for Illinois. John Hanks met them five
miles northwest of Decatur in Macon County, where on a bluff
overlooking the muddy Sangamon they built a cabin, split rails, fenced
fifteen acres and broke the prairie. Young Lincoln was twenty-one and
free, but he remained at home during the summer, helping his father and
his devoted step-mother to establish their new home. The following
winter he split the historic rails for Mrs. Nancy Miller--"four hundred
for every yard of jeans dyed with walnut juice necessary to make him a
pair of trowsers."

In the spring, a pioneer adventurer, Denton Offut, engaged Abraham, with
Hanks and one other helper, to take a boat load of provisions to New
Orleans, for the wages of fifty cents a day and a bonus of sixty dollars
for the three. This and the preceding trip down the river gave Lincoln
the sight of slavery which caused him to say, "If ever I get a chance
to hit that thing I'll hit it hard."

New Salem was a very small village destined to be of only a few years
duration. Here Offut erected a small general store and placed Lincoln in
charge while Offut having other unimportant business ventures went about
the community bragging that his clerk, Lincoln, was the best man in the
country and would some day be president of the United States. Offut's
boasting attracted the attention of the Clary's Grove boys, who lived
near New Salem, and they determined upon a wrestling match between
Lincoln and their champion bully, Jack Armstrong. Lincoln did his best
to avoid