" His incumbency in this office led
to a story worth telling. When New Salem, and by necessity also the
post-office, like the grocery shop, "winked out," in 1836, there was a
trifling balance of sixteen or eighteen dollars due from Lincoln to the
government. Several years afterward, when he was practicing law in
Springfield, the government agent at last appeared to demand a
settlement. Lincoln went to his trunk and drew forth "an old blue sock
with a quantity of silver and copper coin tied up in it," the identical
bits of money which he had gathered from the people at New Salem, and
which, through many days of need in the long intervening period, he had
not once touched.
Fortunately an occupation now offered itself which was more lucrative,
and possessed also the valuable quality of leaving niches of leisure for
the study of the law. The mania for speculation in land had begun in
Illinois; great tracts were being cut up into "town lots," and there was
as lively a market for real estate as the world has ever seen. The
official surveyor of the county, John Calhoun, had more work than he
could do, and offered to appoint Lincoln as a deputy. A little study
made him competent for the work, which he performed for some time with
admirable accuracy, if the stories are to be believed. But he had not
long enjoyed the mild prosperity of this new career ere an untoward
interruption came from a creditor of the extinct grocery firm.
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