“‘Who owns this boat?’ they asked.
“I very proudly answered, ‘I do.’
“‘Will you take us and our trunks out to the steamer?’
“I was glad for a chance to earn something and I soon had them and their trunks loaded into my boat. I soon sculled them out to the steamer. They climbed aboard and I lifted their trunks on deck. I expected them to hand me a couple of bits for my work, but both seemed to have forgotten their dues to me. The steamer was about to start, when I called out to them, ‘You have forgotten to pay me.’
“Each took a silver half-dollar and threw it over into the bottom of my boat. I could scarcely believe my good fortune. That seems like a little thing but it was one of the most important incidents in my life. I could hardly believe that I had been able to earn, by my own work, a dollar in less than a day. I now knew that such things could be done. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.”
Lincoln received eight dollars a month for his trip down the Ohio and Mississippi from Indiana, but he probably got much priceless value out of it in the broader view of life it gave him. He had already prepared himself to think on what he saw, and, from all attainable evidence from every side, to reach reasonable and justified conclusions.
This voyage was comparatively uneventful except that one night, after the little boat crew of three men had sold their goods, they were attacked by seven negroes, who came aboard intending to kill and rob them. But, after a lively fight, the assailants were driven off and the boat was swung out into the river.
One cannot help thinking about what a difference it would have made to the negro race if those negroes had killed the man whom destiny had then started on the way to make their people free.
VI. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUPERIOR MIND
The boy who reads the story of Lincoln, desiring to get real help in building his life, will find no miracle nor any short-cuts to get easily the ambitions of life. Lincoln did not know the office he wanted to hold, but he knew the kind of man he wanted to be and he worked unceasingly to reach that ideal of mind and manhood. In proportion, it is no harder now to know more than others, in order to be correspondingly useful to others, than it was in Lincoln’s time.