But the village was a small part of Sangamon County.  Though Lincoln received a respectable number of votes elsewhere, his total was well down in the running.  He remained an inconspicuous minority candidate.

Meanwhile Offut’s grocery had failed.  In the midst of the legislative campaign, Offut’s farmer storekeeper volunteered for the Indian War with Black Hawk, but returned to New Salem shortly before the election without having once smelled powder.  Since his peers were not of a mind to give him immediate occupation in governing, he turned again to business.  He formed a partnership with a man named Berry.  They bought on credit the wreck of a grocery that had been sacked by Lincoln’s friends of Clary’s Grove, and started business as “General Merchants,” under the style of Berry & Lincoln.  There followed a year of complete unsuccess.  Lincoln demonstrated that he was far more inclined to read any chance book that came his way than to attend to business, and that he had “no money sense.”  The new firm went the way of Offut’s grocery, leaving nothing behind it but debt.  The debts did not trouble Berry; Lincoln assumed them all.  They formed a dreadful load which he bore with his usual patience and little by little discharged.  Fifteen years passed before again he was a free man financially.

A new and powerful influence came into his life during the half idleness of his unsuccessful storekeeping.  It is worth repeating in his own words, or what seems to be the fairly accurate recollection of his words:  “One day a man who was migrating to the West, drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder.  He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value.  I did not want it but to oblige him I bought it and paid him, I think, a half a dollar for it.  Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it Sometime after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries.  I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time; for during the long summer days when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between.  The more I read, the more intensely interested I became.  Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed.  I read until I devoured them."(7)

The majesty of the law at the bottom of a barrel of trash discovered at a venture and taking instant possession of the discoverer’s mind!  Like the genius issuing grandly in the smoke cloud from the vase drawn up out of the sea by the fisher in the Arabian tale!  But this great book was not the only magic casket discovered by the idle store-keeper, the broken seals of which released mighty presences.  Both Shakespeare and Burns were revealed to him in this period.  Never after did either for a moment cease to be his companion.  These literary treasures were found at Springfield twenty miles from New Salem, whither Lincoln went on foot many a time to borrow books.