Abraham Lincoln by Noah Brooks

[Gene C]

This from Mentor Graham, The Man Who Taught Lincoln by Kunigunde Duncan
https://archive.org/details/mentorgraham...ew=theater

Who in Menard County did not need money in November, 1845 • Petersburg court and Springfield court were busy with cases of hog-stealing and brand-changing, crimes that became more common as times grew harder. Many a man stood to take his thirty-nine stripes for a first, or be branded for a second, offense. For his client, Mrs. Bowling Green, Lincoln sued Graham for payment of a note for one hundred dollars. Certain it is that in November, 1845, Graham did not have and could not borrow one hundred dollars.

Lincoln dropped by to talk the matter over. He handed Graham a due bill made to himself for work he had done for Bale in New Salem for which he had never been paid. The due bill happened to be the exact amount of tuition Lincoln had owed Graham since his log-school lessons at the Baptist church in the woods. Lincoln suggested that Graham use this due bill for ten dollars and add to it the various sums for one thing and another which Bale owed Graham. All of these items totaled one hundred dollars. That list of “one thing and another,” still available in its original form at the Petersburg courthouse, shows an entry dating back to Brush Creek days when Graham had cut brush for Bale for fifty cents a day and had never been paid; tuition for many children, both in Illinois and in Kentucky; butter and eggs, and “smoothed lumber” from Graham’s workbench. Jacob Bale, who had been rich enough to buy out everybody as they left New Salem, paid up. And Graham paid Mrs. Green (see Appendix, pp. 255-56).