Mr. Lincoln was often annoyed by "company." His quarters at the tavern afforded him little privacy, and the shade of the tree in front of the grocery was scarcely a sufficiently secluded situation for the purposes of an ardent student. There were too many people to wonder and laugh at a man studying law with "his feet up a tree;" too many to worry him for the stories and jokes which it was supposed he could furnish on demand. For these reasons it became necessary that he should "retire to the country occasionally to rest and study." Sometimes he went to James Short's on the Sand Ridge; sometimes to Minter Graham's; sometimes to Bowlin Greenes; sometimes to Jack Armstrong's, and as often, perhaps, to Able's or Row Herndon's. All of these men served him faithfully and signally at one time and another, and to all of them he was sincerely attached. When Bowlin Greene died, in 1842, Mr. Lincoln, then in the enjoyment of great local reputation, undertook to deliver a funeral oration over the remains of his beloved friend; but, when he rose to speak, his voice was choked with deep emotion: he stood a few moments, while his lips quivered in the effort to form the words of fervent praise he sought to utter, and the tears ran down his yellow and shrivelled cheeks. Some of those who came to hear him, and saw his tall form thus sway in silence over the body of Bowlin Greene, say he looked so helpless, so utterly bereft and pitiable, that every heart in the audience was hushed at the spectacle. After repeated efforts, he found it impossible to speak, and strode away, openly and bitterly sobbing, to the widow's carriage, in which he was driven from the scene. Mr. Herndon's papers disclose less than we should like to know concerning this excellent man: they give us only this burial scene, with the fact that Bowlin Greene had loaned Mr. Lincoln books from their earliest acquaintance, and on one occasion had taken him to his home, and cared for him with the solicitude of a devoted friend through several weeks of great suffering and peril. The circumstances of the attempted eulogy are mentioned here to show the relations which subsisted between Mr. Lincoln and some of the benefactors we have enumerated.
But all this time Mr. Lincoln had a living to make, a running board-bill to pay, and nothing to pay it with. He was, it is true, in the hands of excellent friends, so far as the greater part of his indebtedness was concerned; but he was industrious by nature, and wanted to be working, and paying as he went. He would not have forfeited the good opinion of those confiding neighbors for a lifetime of ease and luxury. It was therefore a most happy thing for him, and he felt it to be so, when he attracted the attention of John Calhoun, the surveyor of Sangamon County.
Calhoun was the type of a perfect gentleman,—brave, courteous, able, and cultivated. He was a Democrat then, and a Democrat when he died. All the world knows how he was president of the Lecompton Convention; how he administered the trust in accordance with his well-known convictions; and how, after a life of devotion to Douglas, he was adroitly betrayed by that facile politician, and left to die in the midst of obloquy and disaster. At the time we speak of, he was one of the most popular men in the State of Illinois, and was one of the foremost chieftains of the political party which invariably carried the county and the district in which Mr. Lincoln lived. He knew Lincoln, and admired him. He was well assured that Lincoln knew nothing of surveying; but he was equally certain that he could soon acquire it. The speculative fever was at its height; he was overrun with business: the country was alive with strangers seeking land; and every citizen was buying and selling with a view to a great fortune in the "flush times" coming. He wanted a deputy with common sense and common honesty: he chose Lincoln, because nobody else possessed these qualities in a more eminent degree. He hunted him up; gave him a book; told him to study it, and said, that, as soon as he was ready, he should have as much work as he could do.
Lincoln took the book, and "retired to the country;" that is, he went out to Minter Graham's for about six weeks, in which time, by the aid of that good master, he became an expert surveyor, and was duly appointed Calhoun's deputy. Of course he made some money, merely his pay for work; but it is a remarkable fact, that, with his vast knowledge of the lands in Sangamon and adjacent counties, he never made a single speculation on his own account. It was not long until he acquired a considerable private business. The accuracy of his surveys were seldom, if ever, questioned. Disputes regarding "corners" and "lines" were frequently submitted to his arbitration; and the decision was invariably accepted as final. It often happened that his business kept him away from New Salem, and his other studies, for weeks at a time; but all this while he was gathering friends against the day of election.
In after years—from 1844 onward—it was his good or bad fortune frequently to meet Calhoun on the stump; but he never forgot his benefaction to him, and always regarded him as the ablest and best man with whom he ever had crossed steel. To the day of Calhoun's death they were warmly attached to each other. In the times when it was most fashionable and profitable to denounce Calhoun and the Le-compton Constitution, when even Douglas turned to revile his old friend and coadjutor, Mr. Lincoln was never known to breathe a word of censure on his personal character.
On the 7th of May, 1833, Mr. Lincoln was appointed postmaster at New Salem. His political opinions were not extreme; and the Jackson administration could find no man who was at the same time more orthodox and equally competent to perform the duties of the office. He was not able to rent a room, for the business is said to have been carried on in his hat; but, from the evidence before us, we imagine that he kept the office in Mr. Hill's store, Mr. Hill's partner, McNamar, having been absent since 1832. He held the place until late in 1836, when New Salem partially disappeared, and the office was removed to Petersburg. For a little while before his own appointment, he is said to have acted as "deputy-postmaster" under Mr. Hill.
The mail arrived duly once a week; and the labors of distributing and delivering it were by no means great. But Mr. Lincoln was determined that the dignity of the place should not suffer while he was the incumbent. He therefore made up for the lack of real business by deciphering the letters of the uneducated portion of the community, and by reading the newspapers aloud to the assembled inhabitants in front of Hill's store.
But his easy good-nature was sometimes imposed upon by inconsiderate acquaintances; and Mr. Hill relates one of the devices by which he sought to stop the abuse. "One Elmore Johnson, an ignorant but ostentatious, proud man, used to go to Lincoln's post-office every day,—sometimes three or four times a day, if in town,—and inquire, 'Any thing for me?' This bored Lincoln, yet it amused him. Lincoln fixed a plan,—wrote a letter to Johnson as coming from a negress in Kentucky, saying many good things about opossum, dances, corn-shuckings, &c.; 'John's! come and see me; and old master won't kick you out of the kitchen any more!' Elmore took it out; opened it; couldn't read a word; pretended to read it; went away; got some friends to read it: they read it correctly; he thought the reader was fooling him, and went to others with the same result. At last he said he would get Lincoln to read it, and presented it to Lincoln. It was almost too much for Lincoln, but he read it. The man never asked afterwards, 'Any thing here for me?"
It was in the latter part of 1834 that Mr. Lincoln's personal property was sold under the hammer, and by due process of law, to meet the judgment obtained by Van Bergen on the note assigned to him by Radford. Every thing he had was taken; but it was the surveyor's instruments which it hurt him most to part with, for by their use he was making a tolerable living, and building up a respectable business. This time, however, rescue came from an unexpected quarter.
When Mr. Lincoln first came to New Salem, he employed a woman to make him a pair of pantaloons, which, probably from the scarcity of material, were cut entirely too short, as his garments usually were. Soon afterwards the woman's brother came to town, and she pointed Abe out to him as he walked along the street. The brother's name was James Short. "Without the necessity of a formal introduction," says Short, "we fell in together, and struck up a conversation, the purport of which I have now forgotten. He made a favorable impression upon me by his conversation on first acquaintance through his intelligence and sprightliness, which impression was deepened from time to time, as I became better acquainted with him." This was a lucky "impression" for Abe. Short was a fast friend, and in the day of trouble a sure and able one. At the time the judgment was obtained, Short lived on the Sand Ridge, four miles from New Salem; and Lincoln was in the habit of walking out there almost daily. Short was then unconscious of the main reason of Mr. Lincoln's remarkable devotion to him: there was a lady in the house whom Lincoln secretly but earnestly loved, and of whom there is much to be said at another place. If the host had known every thing, however, poor Abe would have been equally welcome; for he made himself a strangely agreeable guest here, as he did everywhere else. In busy times he pulled off his roundabout, and helped Short in the field with more energy than any hired man would have displayed. "He was," said Short, "the best hand at husking corn on the stalk I ever saw. I used to consider myself very good; but he would gather two loads to my one."