Thinking it may aid you a little, I send you one of our blank forms of Petitions.  It, you will see, is framed to be sworn to before the Federal court clerk, and, in your cases, will have [to] be so far changed as to be sworn to before the clerk of your circuit court; and his certificate must be accompanied with his official seal.  The schedules, too, must be attended to.  Be sure that they contain the creditors’ names, their residences, the amounts due each, the debtors’ names, their residences, and the amounts they owe, also all property and where located.

Also be sure that the schedules are all signed by the applicants as well as the Petition.  Publication will have to be made here in one paper, and in one nearest the residence of the applicant.  Write us in each case where the last advertisement is to be sent, whether to you or to what paper.

I believe I have now said everything that can be of any advantage.  Your friend as ever, A. Lincoln.

TO GEORGE E. PICKETT—­ADVICE TO YOUTH

February 22, 1842.

I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have.  The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.  Notwithstanding this copy-book preamble, my boy, I am inclined to suggest a little prudence on your part.  You see I have a congenital aversion to failure, and the sudden announcement to your Uncle Andrew of the success of your “lamp rubbing” might possibly prevent your passing the severe physical examination to which you will be subjected in order to enter the Military Academy.  You see I should like to have a perfect soldier credited to dear old Illinois—­no broken bones, scalp wounds, etc.  So I think it might be wise to hand this letter from me in to your good uncle through his room-window after he has had a comfortable dinner, and watch its effect from the top of the pigeon-house.

I have just told the folks here in Springfield on this 111th anniversary of the birth of him whose name, mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in the cause of moral reformation, we mention in solemn awe, in naked, deathless splendor, that the one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.  Recruit for this victory.

Now, boy, on your march, don’t you go and forget the old maxim that “one drop of honey catches more flies than a half-gallon of gall.”  Load your musket with this maxim, and smoke it in your pipe.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SPRINGFIELD WASHINGTONIAN TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, FEBRUARY 22, 1842.

Although the temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned with a degree of success hitherto unparalleled.