“I was contemplating my new flatboat,” the speaker continued, “and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any particular, when two men came down to the shore in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different boats singled out mine, and asked, ‘Who owns this?’ I answered, somewhat modestly, ‘I do.’ ‘Will you,’ said one of them, ‘take us and our trunks out to the steamer?’ ‘Certainly,’ said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning something. I supposed that each of them would give me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flatboat, the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamboat. They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks, and put them on deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar, and threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. Gentlemen, you may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me a trifle; but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day—that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed wider and fairer before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that time.”[iv-1]
But the sequel, as Lincoln told it on another occasion, sounds less inspiring. For while playing with the coins after the steamboat had departed, he dropped one of the pieces overboard. “I can see the quivering and shining of that half-dollar yet,” the narrator thoughtfully added, “as in the quick current it went down the stream, and sank from my sight forever.”[iv-2]
This incident was typical of the brief but inglorious business career which followed. In a certain sense Lincoln’s commercial life may be said to have begun with the fiasco of the lost fare, and to have closed about seven years thereafter, even more disastrously, as the reader will remember, under the cloud of “the national debt.” During that period he experienced, from all accounts, few if any of the joys found by the smug trader in the give-and-take of barter.
Nor did he, while pursuing his next occupation as a surveyor, evince any livelier appreciation of the opportunities for speculation which presented themselves on every side. Promising town-sites or fertile quarter-sections interested him only so far as they afforded the employment whereby he earned his daily bread. For greed of land, like greed of money, had no place in the man’s make-up. He regarded with kindly toleration, however, the struggles of investors who scrambled after title-deeds. Yet if their activities took a dishonest turn, his contempt for the offenders was keener than that which Christian is said to have visited upon the pupils of Mr. Gripeman. In the ancient allegory those worthies were dismissed with a reprimand; but their successors, in this latter-day narrative, did not, on certain occasions at least, escape so easily.
“Land-sharks,” or “land-grabbers,” as they have been variously called, should be rated among Lincoln’s pet aversions. From the time of his admission to the bar, he lost no opportunity of exposing their rascalities and of protecting their victims. Many a poor settler, struggling to save the homestead from blackmailers, who too often infested the government land-offices, would have fared badly if it had not been for this man’s sympathetic help. What he managed to do for the pioneers when so beset, took well-nigh as many forms as did the various kinds of dangers which threatened them. These services, in fact, ranged all the way from the giving of legal aid to the lending of a horse.
It is related that one spring morning, as some of the lawyers on the Eighth Judicial Circuit were riding leisurely toward Springfield, from the West, they were overtaken by a traveler who was hurrying in the same direction. His desperate efforts to quicken the pace of the stumbling, mud-flecked animal which he bestrode, and the appearance in the distance of another horseman, evidently in pursuit, told their own story. Such a scene was not unfamiliar to the little cavalcade of attorneys. They recognized in the first rider a home-maker, racing against time, with perhaps his final payment, to the land-office; and in the second, a home-wrecker pushing forward, no less eagerly, to take advantage of a possible default. For if by a certain hour the settler should fail to reach his goal, the property on which he had spent much toil as well as money would be forfeited, the claim would be reopened, and his pursuer, or any one else, might become the owner. All this passed, like a flash, through the mind of at least one lawyer in the little company that sat their horses, curiously observing the race.
As the first rider came up with them, Lincoln called out: “John, is this the day of your final entry, and have you the money?”
There was a look of despair in the man’s haggard face. Reining up his spent beast, and gazing anxiously down the muddy road that still lay before him, he answered: “Yes, I’ve got the money; but my horse can’t make it.”
“Mine can,” said Lincoln. “Take him, and save your land. Take the right-hand road a mile ahead of this, and get on the south road into town. By this you will save a mile. Take care of the horse as well as you can, but be sure to get there in time to save your land.”