When Abraham Lincoln was clerking for Denton Offutt, he walked three miles one evening after the store was closed to return a sixpence which had been overpaid. On another occasion he gave four ounces for half a pound of tea and delivered the difference before he slept. For this and other acts of the same sort he became known as "Honest Old Abe," but he was no more conspicuous for that quality than many of his neighbors. He was the type and representative of a community which not only respected but required honesty, and were extremely critical and intolerant towards moral delinquencies. Accustomed all their lives to face danger and grapple with the mysterious forces of nature, their personal and moral courage were qualities without which no man could be a leader or have influence. A liar, a coward, a swindler, and an insincere man were detected and branded with public contempt. Courage and truth were commonplace and recognized as essential to manhood. Abraham Lincoln's originality, fearlessness, and self-confidence, his unerring perceptions of right and wrong, made him a leader and gave him an influence which other men did not have. He was born in the same poverty and ignorance, he grew up in the same environment, and his muscles were developed by the same labor as his neighbors', but his mental powers were much keener and acute, his ambition was much higher, and a consciousness of intellectual superiority sustained him in his efforts to rise above his surroundings and take the place his genius warranted. Throughout his entire life he adhered to the code of the frontier. As a lawyer he would not undertake a case unless it was a good one. He often said he was a very poor man on a poor case. His sense of justice had to be aroused before he could do his best. If his client were wrong, he endeavored to settle the dispute the best way he could without going into court; if the evidence had been misrepresented to him, he would throw up the case in the midst of the trial and return the fee. The public knowledge of that fact gave him great influence with the courts and kept bad clients away from him. To a man who once offered him a case the merits of which he did not appreciate, he made, according to his partner, Mr. Herndon, the following response: "Yes, there is no reasonable doubt that I can gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars which rightly belong, it appears to me, as much to them as it does to you. I shall not take your case, but I will give you a little advice for nothing. You seem a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way."