The Best Thing to Take
When Lincoln worked in and kept a grocery-store, it was flanked by a groggery and he had to supply spirits, but from that fact he saw the evils of the saloon and early identified himself with the novel temperance movement. In 1843, he joined the Sons of Temperance. While he said he was temperate on theory, it was not so—he was practically abstinent. Not only did he lecture publicly, but, at one such occasion, he gave out the pledges. In decorating a boy, Cleophas Breckenridge, with a badge, after he took the pledge, he said:
“Sonny, that is the best thing you will ever take.”