moorings below the dam. This exploit gained for young Lincoln the
enthusiastic admiration of his employer, and turned his own mind in
the direction of an invention which he afterwards patented "for
lifting vessels over shoals." The model on which he obtained this
patent--a little boat whittled by his own hand in 1849, after he had
become prominent as a lawyer and politician--is still shown to
visitors at the Department of the Interior. We have never learned that
it has served any other purpose.

[Illustration: MODEL OF LINCOLN'S INVENTION, IN THE PATENT OFFICE,
WASHINGTON.]

[Illustration: REDUCED FAC-SIMILE OF DRAWINGS IN THE PATENT OFFICE.]

[Sidenote: Lamon, p. 83.]

They made a quick trip down the Sangamon, the Illinois, and the
Mississippi rivers. Although it was but a repetition in great part of
the trip young Lincoln had made with Gentry, it evidently created a
far deeper impression on his mind than the former one. The simple and
honest words of John Hanks leave no doubt of this. At New Orleans, he
said, they saw for the first time "negroes chained, maltreated,
whipped, and scourged. Lincoln saw it; his heart bled; said nothing
much, was silent, looked bad. I can say, knowing it, that it was on
this trip that he formed his opinion of slavery. It run its iron in
him then and there, May, 1831. I have heard him say so often." The
sight of men in chains was intolerable to him. Ten years after this he
made another journey by water with his friend Joshua Speed, of
Kentucky. Writing to Speed about it after the lapse of fourteen years,
he says: "In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a