In the spring of 1831 Denton Offut hired Lincoln to go with him on a boat, with a load of stock and provisions, to New Orleans, and, after many adventures, in which his strength and ingenuity saved boat and cargo several times, he again found himself at the mouth of the Mississippi. Here he first saw the hideous side of slavery. His law-partner thus refers to one of the scenes he witnessed: “A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh and made her trot up and down the room like a horse.... Bidding his companions follow him, he said, ‘By God, boys, let’s get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that thing I’ll hit it hard.’” The grandest and bloodiest page of modern history is a record of how Lincoln fulfilled that promise. That very summer he went to the village of New Salem, on the Sangamon River--a village that has long since vanished--and became clerk in a log-house general store opened by Offut, who was a restless commercial adventurer. Lincoln and an assistant slept in the store. Here the tall clerk became famous for his stories and homely wit. His immense stature, his strength, his humor and his penetrating logic attracted attention at once. He talked in quaint, waggish parables, but he never failed to reach the heart or brain. Offut’s store grew to be the common meeting place of the frontiersmen, and long-legged, droll, kindly Lincoln developed his natural genius for story-telling and argument. But Offut bragged of his clerk’s strength. That angered the rough, rollicking youths of a nearby settlement known as Clary’s Grove, who picked out Jack Armstrong, their leader and a veritable giant, to “throw” Lincoln. At first Lincoln declined the challenge on the ground that he did not like “wooling and pulling.” But, although his inheritance of Quaker blood inclined him to avoid violence, he was finally taunted into the struggle. In the presence of all New Salem and Clary’s Grove he partly stripped his two hundred and fourteen pounds of muscle-ribbed body and conquered the bully of Sangamon County. After that exhibition of strength and pluck, Lincoln was the hero of the community. Braggarts became silent in his presence. A ruffian swore one day in the store before a woman. Lincoln bade him stop, but he continued his abuse. “Well, if you must be whipped,” said the clerk, “I suppose I might as well whip you as any man.” And he did it. That was Lincoln. His honesty became a proverb. It is said that, having overcharged a customer six cents, he walked three miles in the dark, after the store was closed, to give back the money. By mistake he sold four ounces of tea for a half-pound, and the next day trudged to the customer’s cabin with the rest of the tea.