the best of men and women can give, and enters upon some form of public
service on the road to usefulness and honor, the University course being
only the first stage of the public training. So Lincoln, at twenty-one,
had just begun his preparation for the public life to which he soon began
to aspire. For some years yet he must continue to earn his daily bread
by the sweat of his brow, having absolutely no means, no home, no friend
to consult. More farm work as a hired hand, a clerkship in a village
store, the running of a mill, another trip to New Orleans on a flatboat
of his own contriving, a pilot's berth on the river--these were the means
by which he subsisted until, in the summer of 1832, when he was
twenty-three years of age, an event occurred which gave him public
recognition.

The Black Hawk war broke out, and, the Governor of Illinois calling for
volunteers to repel the band of savages whose leader bore that name,
Lincoln enlisted and was elected captain by his comrades, among whom he
had already established his supremacy by signal feats of strength and
more than one successful single combat. During the brief hostilities he
was engaged in no battle and won no military glory, but his local
leadership was established. The same year he offered himself as a
candidate for the Legislature of Illinois, but failed at the polls. Yet
his vast popularity with those who knew him was manifest. The district
consisted of several counties, but the unanimous vote of the people of
his own county was for Lincoln. Another unsuccessful attempt at
store-keeping was followed by better luck at surveying, until his horse
and instruments were levied upon under execution for the debts of his
business adventure.

I have been thus detailed in sketching his early years because upon these
strange foundations the structure of his great fame and service was