difficult for us to appreciate.  His positions as candidate for the legislature and as postmaster probably had much to do in bringing him another piece of good fortune.  In the rapid settlement of Illinois and Sangamon County, and the obtaining titles to farms by purchase or preemption, as well as in the locating and opening of new roads, the county surveyor had more work on his hands than he could perform throughout a county extending forty miles east and west and fifty north and south, and was compelled to appoint deputies to assist him.  The name of the county surveyor was John Calhoun, recognized by all his contemporaries in Sangamon as a man of education and talent and an aspiring Democratic politician.  It was not an easy matter for Calhoun to find properly qualified deputies, and when he became acquainted with Lincoln, and learned his attainments and aptitudes, and the estimation in which he was held by the people of New Salem, he wisely concluded to utilize his talents and standing, notwithstanding their difference in politics.  The incident is thus recorded by Lincoln: 

“The surveyor of Sangamon offered to depute to Abraham that portion of his work which was within his part of the county.  He accepted, procured a compass and chain, studied Flint and Gibson a little, and went at it.  This procured bread, and kept soul and body together.”

Tradition has it that Calhoun not only gave him the appointment, but lent him the book in which to study the art, which he accomplished in a period of six weeks, aided by the schoolmaster, Mentor Graham.  The exact period of this increase in knowledge and business capacity is not recorded, but it must have taken place in the summer of 1833, as there exists a certificate of survey in Lincoln’s handwriting signed, “J.  Calhoun, S.S.C., by A. Lincoln,” dated January 14, 1834.  Before June of that year he had surveyed and located a public road from “Musick’s Ferry on Salt Creek, via New Salem, to the county line in the direction to Jacksonville,” twenty-six miles and seventy chains in length, the exact course of which survey, with detailed bearings and distances, was drawn on common white letter-paper pasted in a long slip, to a scale of two inches to the mile, in ordinary yet clear and distinct penmanship.  The compensation he received for this service was three dollars per day for five days, and two dollars and fifty cents for making the plat and report.

An advertisement in the “Journal” shows that the regular fees of another deputy were “two dollars per day, or one dollar per lot of eight acres or less, and fifty cents for a single line, with ten cents per mile for traveling.”

While this class of work and his post-office, with its emoluments, probably amply supplied his board, lodging and clothing, it left him no surplus with which to pay his debts, for it was in the latter part of that same year (1834) that Van Bergen caused his horse and surveying instruments to be sold under the hammer, as already related.  Meanwhile, amid these fluctuations of good and bad luck, Lincoln maintained his equanimity, his steady, persevering industry, and his hopeful ambition and confidence in the future.  Through all his misfortunes and his failures, he preserved his self-respect and his determination to succeed.