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| Honest
Abe |
In managing the country store, as in everything that he undertook
for others, Lincoln did his very best. He was honest, civil, ready
to do anything that should encourage customers to come to the place,
full of pleasantries, patient, and alert.
On one occasion, finding late at night, when he counted over his
cash, that he had taken a few cents from a customer more than was
due, he closed the store, and walked a long distance to make good
the deficiency.
At another time, discovering on the scales in the morning a weight
with which he had weighed out a package of tea for a woman the night
before, he saw that he had given her too little for her money. He
weighed out what was due, and carried it to her, much to the
surprise of the woman, who had not known that she was short in the
amount of her purchase.
Innumerable incidents of this sort are related of Lincoln, and we
should not have space to tell of the alertness with which he sprang
to protect defenseless women from insult, or feeble children from
tyranny; for in the rude community in which he lived, the rights
of the defenseless were not always respected as they should have
been. There were bullies then, as now.
-- Noah Brooks |
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