Clearly the new clerk had the best of the trade. Buck Thompson stood to his bargain. The horse was passed to Lincoln. He looked it over. Something in the ungainly figure and the big-headed horse brought a smile. Yet they waited. What would he do next—or say?
"Partner," he said to Buck after the examination, "I wouldn't know what use to make of this here critter. I can't make no sight-unseen proposition, but I'd give you two bits for my own hoss back."
"FIXIN FER THE ANGELS"
Offutt's new store under the management of Abe Lincoln came to be, almost immediately, the chief point of interest in the village.
Business was never so rushing that the genial, long-legged new-comer could not find time for a friendly greeting or a new story.
Jo Kelsy, famed as the best Shakespeare scholar New Salem boasted, soon discovered a kindred spirit in Abe Lincoln, and was delighted to find in him a pupil so hungry to get acquainted with Bill Shakespeare.
Mentor Graham, the Scotch schoolmaster, dropped into the store because he soon discovered that, although the youth who had assisted him on election day had had no opportunity of going to school, he was far more advanced in general knowledge than any pupil in his school, and the fact that Abe Lincoln wanted to study grammar with him, and after a while higher branches, pleased him.