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It was Eli, "the wandering Jew," as he had been wont to call himself in the days when he carried a pack on the road through Peter's Bluff and Clary's Grove and New Salem to Beardstown and back. "Dis is my store," said Eli. "Your store!" Abe exclaimed. "Ya, look at de sign."
Lord Ellis, Clary's father, had inherited from his parents a large fortune, which, however, he squandered in noble passions, and it was feared that his son Sir Edward, the heir-at-law, would one day inherit only the empty title.
The wrestling match was arranged, and the settlers flocked to it like Spaniards to a bull-fight. Battle was joined and Lincoln was getting the better of Armstrong, whereupon the "Clary's Grove boys," with fine chivalry, were about to rush in upon Lincoln and maim him, or worse, when the timely intervention of a prominent citizen possibly saved even the life of the future President.
It was fortunate for Lincoln that the questions with which he had to deal, and with which his country and the world proclaim him to have dealt, on the whole, admirably well, though not in their magnitude and importance, were completely within his ken, and had been always present to his mind. Reconstruction would have made a heavier demand on the political science of Clary's Grove.
"Abra'm Lincoln, of Illinois," was the modest response. Lincoln's practical sense and his understanding of human nature enabled him to save the life of the son of his old Clary's Grove friend, Jack Armstrong, who was on trial for murder. Lincoln, learning of it, went to the old mother who had been kind to him in the days of his boyhood poverty, and promised her that he would get her boy free.
William Armstrong, the son of Jack Armstrong, of Clary's Grove, inheriting, as it seems, the "abundant animal spirits" of his father, committed, as was universally believed, a very brutal murder at a camp meeting, and being brought to trial was in imminent peril of the halter. Lincoln volunteered to defend him.
How deeply he understood Lincoln is justly a matter of debate; but this, at least, he understood that Clary's Grove, in attributing to Lincoln its own idea of leadership, was definitely wrong. He saw in Lincoln, in all the larger matters, a tendency to wait on events, to take the lead indicated by events, to do what shallow people would have called mere drifting.
Cousin Harlowe, said my aunt Hervey, allow me to say, that my cousin Clary's prudence may be confided in. I am convinced it may, joined my mother. You may be sure, interrupted my uncle Harlowe, he will endeavour to see her there. So would such an impudent man here, said my uncle Antony: and 'tis better done there than here. Better no where, said my father.
In the fulness of her love Patience had allowed her father to learn the secret of poor Clary's heart; and in the fulness of her love she had endeavoured to make things smooth at Newton.
But if Mr. John Hay has faithfully repeated Lincoln's words, a point upon which we may have our doubts without prejudice to Mr. Hay's veracity, Mrs. Lincoln's interpretation of the vision is, to say the least, a very curious coincidence. The flower of the heroic race in the neighbourhood of Salem, were the "Clary's Grove boys," whose chief and champion was Jack Armstrong.
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