had been in April, 1831, when the flatboat he had built and its little
crew were detained in getting their boat over the Rutledge and Cameron
mill-dam, on which it lodged. When Lincoln walked into New Salem,
three months later, he was not altogether a stranger, for the people
remembered him as the ingenious flatboat-man who, a little while
before, had freed his boat from water (and thus enabled it to get over
the dam) by resorting to the miraculous expedient of boring a hole in
the bottom."[B]

Offutt's goods had not arrived when Mr. Lincoln reached New Salem; and
he "loafed" about, so those who remember his arrival say,
good-naturedly taking a hand in whatever he could find to do, and in
his droll way making friends of everybody. By chance, a bit of work
fell to him almost at once, which introduced him generally and gave
him an opportunity to make a name in the neighborhood. It was election
day. The village school-master, Mentor Graham by name, was clerk, but
the assistant was ill. Looking about for some one to help him, Mr.
Graham saw a tall stranger loitering around the polling place, and
called to him, "Can you write?" "Yes," said the stranger, "I can make
a few rabbit tracks." Mr. Graham evidently was satisfied with the
answer, for he promptly initiated him; and he filled his place not
only to the satisfaction of his employer, but also to the delectation
of the loiterers about the polls, for whenever things dragged he
immediately began "to spin out a stock of Indiana yarns." So droll
were they that years afterward men who listened to Lincoln that day
repeated them to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to
start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his
story-telling.

[Footnote A: "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G.