against the sand or obstruction these bellows are to be filled with air, and thus buoyed up the ship is expected to float lightly and gayly over the shoal which would otherwise have proved a serious interruption to her voyage.  The model, which is about eighteen or twenty inches long and has the appearance of having been whittled with a knife out of a shingle and a cigar-box, is built without any elaboration or ornament or any extra apparatus beyond that necessary to show the operation of buoying the steamer over the obstructions.  It is carved as one might imagine a retired railsplitter would whittle, strongly but not smoothly, and evidently made with a view solely to convey to the minds of the patent authorities, by the simplest possible means, an idea of the purpose and plan of the invention.  The label on the steamer’s deck informs us that the patent was obtained; but we do not learn that the navigation of the western rivers was revolutionized by this quaint conception.  The modest little model has reposed here for many years, and the inventor has found it his task to guide the ship of state over shoals more perilous and obstructions more obstinate than any prophet dreamed of when Abraham Lincoln wrote his bold autograph across the prow of his miniature steamer.”

At the conclusion of his trip to New Orleans, Lincoln’s employer, Mr. Offutt, entered into mercantile trade at New Salem, a settlement on the Sangamon river, in Menard County, two miles from Petersburg, the county seat.  He opened a store of the class usually to be found in such small towns, and also set up a flouring-mill.  In the late expedition down the Mississippi Mr. Offutt had learned Lincoln’s valuable qualities, and was anxious to secure his help in his new enterprise.  Says Mr. Barrett:  “For want of other immediate employment, and in the same spirit which had heretofore actuated him, Abraham Lincoln entered upon the duties of a clerk, having an eye to both branches of his employer’s business.  This connection continued for nearly a year, all duties of his position being faithfully performed.”  It was to this year’s humble but honorable service of young Lincoln that Mr. Douglas tauntingly alluded in one of his speeches during the canvass of 1858 as ‘keeping a groggery.’

While engaged in the duties of Offutt’s store Lincoln began the study of English grammar.  There was not a text-book to be obtained in the neighborhood; but hearing that there was a copy of Kirkham’s Grammar in the possession of a person seven or eight miles distant he walked to his house and succeeded in borrowing it.  L.M.  Green, a lawyer of Petersburg, in Menard County, says that every time he visited New Salem at this period Lincoln took him out upon a hill and asked him to explain some point in Kirkham that had given him trouble.  After having mastered the book he remarked to a friend that if that was what they called a science he thought he could “subdue another.”  Mr. Green says that Lincoln’s talk at this time showed