THE KINDNESS SHOWN LINCOLN IN NEW SALEM.
The kindness of Mr. Short was not exceptional in Lincoln’s New Salem career. When the store had “winked out,” as he put it, and the post-office had been left without headquarters, one of his neighbors, Samuel Hill, invited the homeless postmaster into his store. There was hardly a man or woman in the community who would not have been glad to do as much. It was a simple recognition of Lincoln’s friendliness to them. He was what they called “obliging”—a man who instinctively did the thing which he saw would help another, no matter how trivial or homely it was. In the home of Rowan Herndon, where he had boarded when he first came to the town, he had made himself loved by his care of the children. “He nearly always had one of them around with him,” says Mr. Herndon. In the Rutledge tavern, where he afterwards lived, the landlord told with appreciation how, when his house was full, Lincoln gave up his bed, went to the store, and slept on the counter, his pillow a web of calico. If a traveller “stuck in the mud” in New Salem’s one street, Lincoln was always the first to help pull out the wheel. The widows praised him because he “chopped their wood;” the overworked, because he was always ready to give them a lift. It was the spontaneous, unobtrusive helpfulness of the man’s nature which endeared him to everybody, and which inspired a general desire to do all possible in return. There are many tales told of homely service rendered him, even by the hard-working farmers’ wives around New Salem. There was not one of them who did not gladly “put on a plate” for Abe Lincoln when he appeared, or did not darn or mend for him when she knew he needed it. Hannah Armstrong, the wife of the hero of Clary’s Grove, made him one of her family. “Abe would come out to our house,” she said, “drink milk, eat mush, cornbread and butter, bring the children candy, and rock the cradle while I got him something to eat.... Has stayed at our house two or three weeks at a time.” Lincoln’s pay for his first piece of surveying came in the shape of two buckskins, and it was Hannah who “foxed” them on his trousers.
His relations were equally friendly in the better homes of the community; even at the minister, the Rev. John Cameron’s, he was perfectly at home, and Mrs. Cameron was by him affectionately called “Aunt Polly.” It was not only his kindly service which made Lincoln loved; it was his sympathetic comprehension of the duties and joys and sorrows and interests of the people. Whether it was Jack Armstrong and his wrestling, Hannah and her babies, Kelso and his fishing and poetry, the school-master and his books—with one and all he was at home. He possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of entering into the interests of others, a power found only in reflective, unselfish natures endowed with a humorous sense of human foibles, and with great tenderness of heart. Men and women amused Lincoln, but so long as they were sincere he loved them and sympathized with them. He was human in the best sense of that fine word.