“He’s for them that need scarin’.  The man that don’t need that has to be his own preacher here and sow and reap his own morality.  He can make himself just as much of a saint as he pleases.”

“If he has the raw material to work with,” Abe interposed.

“The self-made saint is the only kind I believe in,” said Samson.

“We haven’t any Erie Canal to Heaven, with the minister towin’ us along,” said Abe.  “There’s some that say it’s only fifteen miles to Springfield, but the man that walks it knows better.”

The tavern was the only house in New Salem with stairs in it.  Stairs so steep, as Samson writes, that “they were first cousins to the ladder.”  There were four small rooms above them.  Two of these were separated by a partition of cloth hanging from the rafters.  In each was a bed and bedstead and smaller beds on the floor.  In case there were a number of adult guests the bedstead was screened with sheets hung upon strings.  In one of these rooms the travelers had a night of refreshing sleep.

After riding two days with the Doctor, Samson bought the claim of one Isaac Gollaher to a half section of land a little more than a mile from the western end of the village.  He chose a site for his house on the edge of an open prairie.

“Now we’ll go over and see Abe,” said Dr. Allen, after the deal was made.  “He’s the best man with an axe and a saw in this part of the country.  He clerks for Mr. Offut.  Abe Lincoln is one of the best fellows that ever lived—­a rough diamond just out of the great mine of the West, that only needs to be cut and polished.”

Denton Offut’s store was a small log structure about twenty by twenty which stood near the brow of the hill east of Rutledge’s Tavern.  When they entered it Abe lay at full length on the counter, his head resting on a bolt of blue denim as he studied a book in his hand.  He wore the same shirt and one suspender and linsey trousers which he had worn in the dooryard of the tavern, but his feet were covered only by his blue yarn socks.

It was a general store full of exotic flavors, chiefly those of tea, coffee, whisky, tobacco, muscovado sugar and molasses.  There was a counter on each side.  Bolts of cloth, mostly calico, were piled on the far end of the right counter as one entered and the near end held a show case containing a display of cutlery, pewter spoons, jewelry and fishing tackle.  There were double windows on either side of the rough board door with its wooden latch.  The left counter held a case filled with threads, buttons, combs, colored ribbons, and belts and jew’s-harps.  A balance stood in the middle of this counter.  A chest of tea, a big brown jug, a box of candles, a keg and a large wooden pail occupied its farther end.  The shelving on its side walls was filled by straw hats, plug tobacco, bolts of cloth, pills and patent medicines and paste-board boxes containing shirts, handkerchiefs and underwear.  A suit of blue jeans,