every sort much of his sensitiveness for animals had passed away. He was
not averse to cock fighting; he enjoyed a horse race.(5) Altogether, in
his outer life, before the catastrophe that revealed him to himself,
he was quite as much in the tone of New Salem as ever in that of Pigeon
Creek. When the election came he got every vote in New Salem except
three.(6)

But the village was a small part of Sangamon County. Though Lincoln
received a respectable number of votes elsewhere, his total was well
down in the running. He remained an inconspicuous minority candidate.

Meanwhile Offut's grocery had failed. In the midst of the legislative
campaign, Offut's farmer storekeeper volunteered for the Indian War
with Black Hawk, but returned to New Salem shortly before the election
without having once smelled powder. Since his peers were not of a
mind to give him immediate occupation in governing, he turned again to
business. He formed a partnership with a man named Berry. They bought on
credit the wreck of a grocery that had been sacked by Lincoln's friends
of Clary's Grove, and started business as "General Merchants," under the
style of Berry & Lincoln. There followed a year of complete unsuccess.
Lincoln demonstrated that he was far more inclined to read any chance
book that came his way than to attend to business, and that he had "no
money sense." The new firm went the way of Offut's grocery, leaving
nothing behind it but debt. The debts did not trouble Berry; Lincoln
assumed them all. They formed a dreadful load which he bore with his
usual patience and little by little discharged. Fifteen years passed
before again he was a free man financially.

A new and powerful influence came into his life during the half idleness
of his unsuccessful storekeeping. It is worth repeating in his own