"After Abe got to Decatur," says John Hanks, "or rather to Macon (my country), a man by the name of Posey came into our neighborhood, and made a speech: it was a bad one, and I said Abe could beat it. I turned down a box, or keg, and Abe made his speech. The other man was a candidate. Abe wasn't. Abe beat him to death, his subject being the navigation of the Sangamon River. The man, after the speech was through, took Abe aside, and asked him where he had learned so much, and how he did so well. Abe replied, stating his manner and method of reading, and what he had read. The man encouraged Lincoln to persevere." In February, 1831, a Mr. Denton Offutt wanted to engage John Hanks to take a flatboat to New Orleans. John was not well disposed to the business; but Offutt came to the house, and would take no denial; made much of John's fame as a river-man, and at length persuaded him to present the matter to Abe and John Johnston. He did so. The three friends discussed the question with great earnestness: it was no slight affair to them, for they were all young and poor. At length they agreed to Offutt's proposition, and that agreement was the turning-point in Abe's career. They were each to receive fifty cents a day, and the round sum of sixty dollars divided amongst them for making the trip. These were wages such as Abe had never received before, and might have tempted him to a much more difficult enterprise. When he went with Gentry, the pay was only eight dollars a month, and no such company and assistance as he was to have now. But Offutt was lavish with his money, and generous bargains like this ruined him a little while after. In March, Hanks, Johnston, and Lincoln went down the Sangamon in a canoe to Jamestown (then Judy's Ferry), five miles east of Springfield. Thence they walked to Springfield, and found Mr. Offutt comforting himself at "Elliott's tavern in Old Town." He had contracted to have a boat ready at the mouth of Spring Creek, but, not looking after it himself, was, of course, "disappointed." There was only one way out of the trouble: the three hands must build a boat. They went to the mouth of Spring Creek, five miles north of Springfield, and there consumed two weeks cutting the timber from "Congress land." In the mean time, Abe walked back to Judy's Ferry, by way of Springfield, and brought down the canoe which they had left at the former place. The timber was hewed and scored, and then "rafted down to Saugamon-town." At the mouth of Spring Creek they had been compelled to walk a full mile for their meals; but at Sangamon-town they built a shanty, and boarded themselves. "Abe was elected cook," and performed the duties of the office much to the satisfaction of the party. The lumber was sawed at Kirkpatrick's mill, a mile and a half from the shanty. Laboring under many disadvantages like this, they managed to complete and launch the boat in about four weeks from the time of beginning.