Until he was twenty his father hired him out to all sorts of work, at which he sometimes earned $6 a month and sometimes thirty-one cents a day. Just before he came of age his family, with all their possessions packed in a cart drawn by four oxen, moved again toward the West. For two weeks they travelled across the country into Illinois, and finally made a new home on the banks of the Sangamon River, a stream flowing into the Ohio. The tiresome journey was made in the month of March along muddy roads and over swollen streams, young Lincoln driving the oxen.
On reaching the end of the journey, Abraham helped his father to build a hut and to clear and fence ten acres of land for planting. Shortly after this work was done he bargained with a neighbor, Mrs. Nancy Miller, to split 400 rails for every yard of brown jeans needed to make him a pair of trousers. As Lincoln was tall, three and one-half yards were needed, and he had to split 1,400 fence rails--a large amount of work for a pair of trousers.
From time to time he had watched the boats carrying freight up and down the river, and had wondered where the vessels were going. Eager to know by experience the life of which he had dreamed, he determined to become a boatman. He was hungry for knowledge, and with the same earnestness and energy with which he had absorbed the great thoughts of his books, he now applied himself to learn the commerce of the river and the life along its banks. When an opportunity presented, he found employment on a flat boat that carried corn, hogs, hay, and other farm produce down to New Orleans. On one of his trips he chanced to attend a slave auction. Looking on while one slave after another was knocked down to the highest bidder, his indignation grew until at length he cried out, "Boys, let's get away from this; if I ever get a chance to hit that thing" (meaning slavery), "I'll hit it hard." Little did he think then what a blow he would strike some thirty years later.
Tiring at length of his long journeys to New Orleans, he became clerk in a village store at New Salem. Many stories are told of Lincoln's honesty as displayed in his dealings with the people in this village store. It is said that on one occasion a woman in making change overpaid him the trifling sum of six cents. When Lincoln found out the mistake he walked three miles and back that night to give the woman her money.