Returning to New Salem, Lincoln, having served his apprenticeship as a clerk, commenced storekeeping on his own account. An opening was made for him by the departure of Mr. Radford, the keeper of a grocery, who, having offended the Clary's Grove boys, they "selected a convenient night for breaking in his windows and gutting his establishment." From his ruins rose the firm of Lincoln & Berry. Doubt rests on the great historic question whether Lincoln sold liquor in his store, and on that question still more agonizing to a sensitive morality--whether he sold it by the dram. The points remain, we are told, and will forever remain undetermined. The only fact in which history can repose with certainty is that some liquor must have been _given_ away, since nobody in the neighbourhood of Clary's Grove could keep store without offering the customary dram to the patrons of the place. When taxed on the platform by his rival, Douglas, with having sold liquor, Mr. Lincoln replied that if he figured on one side of the counter, Douglas figured on the other. "As a storekeeper," says Mr. Ellis, "Mr. Lincoln wore flax and tow linen pantaloons--I thought about five inches too short in the legs--and frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He had a calico shirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogues, tan-colour; blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old style, and without a band." It is recorded that he preferred dealing with men and boys, and disliked to wait on the ladies. Possibly, if his attire has been rightly described, the ladies, even the Clary's Grove ladies, may have reciprocated the feeling.