There were apt to be loungers as well as busy customers at the store, and when business did not press the head clerk was often known to wander away from idle gossip, with a book in his hand, to the retirement and shelter of the neighboring woods. Candles were not as scarce as they had been upon Little Pigeon Creek, but they were costly, and a fellow who needed his spare cash for books had to be economical. Not far from the store was a cooper shop, and here of an evening, long after other people were abed and asleep, Abraham Lincoln used to lie and read, lighting shavings, one by one, as the lamp of his patient search for knowledge. Every man of any superior education who visited the village was sought out and questioned as if he had been a printed volume. There was no wonder that a course so extraordinary attracted general attention, and that the people of all that region began to wonder and to talk about the literary acquirements of the tall young fellow who had shaken the burly champion of Clary's Grove. The fame already acquired as a boatman shortly received a remarkable addition. The roads of Illinois were bad, railroads were yet undreamed of, the population clung to the borders of the water-courses, and these were to the last degree capricious and unreliable for purposes of navigation. Projects for their improvement were broached at an early day, and gave special zest to the great Jacksonian political controversy, as to whether internal improvements could constitutionally be undertaken by the National Government, or whether each State had sovereign control of them within its own borders. Whigs and Democrats alike, however, living along the Sangamon cherished a hope that, in some hydraulic miracle, that stream might be made to carry a steamboat at all seasons instead of only in a Spring thaw or a Summer freshet. The hopes of some men took the form of faith sufficient to charter a steamer called the Talisman, early in the Spring of 1832, and test the capacity of the Sangamon channel. She was not a large boat, and found her way up to Beardstown without difficulty so far as water was concerned, the impediments to be overcome consisting mainly of ice and driftwood. There was great excitement throughout the whole region, for there might be a new era opening to all freight and passenger traffic, and so to all local prosperity. Every man's lands and crops would be worth more if the trial trip should lead to regular steamboat navigation of the Sangamon. At Beardstown the boat was met by a party of axemen from the upper river, ready to clear away obstructions, and at their head was Abraham Lincoln, chosen as pilot for the hardest part of the experiment. The water in the river was pretty high, and by tearing away a part of the New Salem dam, as well as by much chopping of old driftwood, a passage was forced as far as Bogue's Mill, some distance above. Here, however, the Sangamon began to betray its true character, and went down with such rapidity that, in order to prevent the Talisman being left aground for the season, her pilot wisely turned her head downstream again. He was not too prompt in his decision, for the return voyage was tediously slow and toilsome. He got the boat through at last, and everybody was satisfied that the Sangamon would need a great deal of improvement to make a good river of it. Lincoln, it is said, received forty dollars for his services, and walked all the distance back from Beardstown to New Salem, while the Talisman steamed away to St. Louis, to be burned there at her wharf, with other boats, a few months later. Another failure which occurred at about this time was that of Mr. Denton Offutt. The mill was retransferred to its former owners, the store was sold out, and all of Abraham Lincoln's time was once more upon his hands. He was neither clerk nor miller, and there was no more piloting on the Sangamon to be done. More stirring employment had been provided for him by the determination of the great Sac war chief, Black Hawk, to imitate Tecumseh and rally the red tribes to check the destructive advances of paleface civilization. He was an hereditary chief of his then powerful tribe, and possessed much personal influence over other tribes. Much of this came from their superstitious veneration for the character of prophet and soothsayer which he assumed, in a sort of copy of Tecumseh's brother, Olliwachica. While intriguing actively to organize an extended Indian league, he was, during several successive years, a scourge of the northwestern border of Illinois. In the Spring of 1831 he believed himself prepared for war on a larger scale, but his savage confederacy broke in pieces, and only his own warriors followed him across the boundary line, in a visionary attempt to reconquer their ancient huntinggrounds, ceded by treaty to the palefaces. He was easily driven back, and was compelled to make a new treaty, which proved to be as strong as the old had been, but no more. In the Spring of 1832 he and his braves were once more in Illinois, confidently expecting to be re-enforced by the Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies, and other Indians. Again the prophet-chief was disappointed, but the force already with him was strong enough to cause general alarm among the frontier settlers, and Governor Reynolds issued a proclamation calling for volun teers. The State was well supplied with good raw material for an army, very raw, indeed, and men offered with even excessive promptness. A full company was formed from among the Sangamon River settlers, and Abraham Lincoln enlisted, as did the others, as a private, for the volunteers had the right to elect their own officers. He had said that he would have been out the year before but for his contracts with Mr. Offutt, and the military spirit he had displayed had caused him to be chosen captain of a local militia company. Real service was now near, however, and he was as ignorant of tactics as were his Clary's Grove friends who volunteered with him. A man of some property and pretensions named Kirkpatrick, owner of the sawmill at Sangamontown, was a candidate for the captaincy, but full three fourths of the company declared their preference for Lincoln. They wisely decided to have |