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A Man for the Ages: A Story of the Builders of Democracy

by Irving Bacheller · English · Gutenberg #17237 · 565,696 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Man for the Ages: A Story of the Builders of Democracy

Author: Irving Bacheller

Illustrator: John Wolcott Adams


        
Release date: December 5, 2005 [eBook #17237]
                Most recently updated: December 13, 2020

Language: English

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                          A MAN FOR THE AGES

                         By IRVING BACHELLER

                 A STORY OF THE BUILDERS OF DEMOCRACY

   AUTHOR OF THE LIGHT IN THE CLEARING, KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE, ETC.

                                 1919




TO MY DEAR FRIEND AND COMRADE
ALEXANDER GROSSET

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK IN
TOKEN OF MY ESTEEM




_Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive
good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become
rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not
him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work
diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his
own shall be safe from violence when built._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
_March 21, 1864._




A Letter

TO THE AGED AND HONORABLE JOSIAH TRAYLOR FROM HIS GRANDSON, A SOLDIER IN
FRANCE, WHEREIN THE MOTIVE AND INSPIRATION OF THIS NARRATIVE ARE BRIEFLY
PRESENTED.


_In France, September 10, 1915._

Dear Grandfather:

At last I have got mine. I had been scampering towards the stars, like a
jack-rabbit chased by barking greyhounds, when a shrapnel shell caught up
with me. It sneezed all over my poor bus, and threw some junk into me as
if it thought me nothing better than a kind of waste basket. Seems as if
it had got tired of carrying its load and wanted to put it on me. It
succeeded famously but I got home with the bus. Since then they have been
taking sinkers and fish hooks out me fit only for deep water. Don't
worry, I'm getting better fast. I shall play no more football and you
will not see me pitching curves and running bases again. No, I shall sit
in the grandstand myself hereafter and there will not be so much of me
but I shall have quite a shuck on my soul for all that. I've done a lot
of thinking since I have been lying on my back with nothing else to do.
When your body gets kind of turned over in the ditch it's wonderful how
your mind begins to hustle around the place. Until this thing happened my
intellect was nothing more than a vague rumor. I had heard of it, now and
then, in college, and I had hoped that it would look me up some time and
ask what it could do for me, but it didn't. These days I would scarcely
believe that I have a body, the poor thing being upon the jacks in this
big machine shop, but my small intellect is hopping all over the earth
and back again and watching every move of these high-toned mechanics with
their shiny tools and white aprons. My mind and I have kind of got
acquainted with each other and I'm getting attached to it. It is quite an
energetic, promising young mind and I don't know but I'll try to make a
permanent place for it in my business.

I've been thinking of our Democracy and of my coming over here to be
chucked into this big jack pot as if my life were a small coin; of all
the dear old days of the past I have thought and chiefly how the
wonderful story of your life has been woven into mine--threads of wisdom
and adventure and humor and romance. I like to unravel it and look at the
colors. Lincoln is the strongest, longest thread in the fabric. Often I
think of your description of the great, tender hands that lifted you to
his shoulder when you were a boy, of the droll and kindly things that he
said to you. I have laughed and cried recalling those hours of yours with
Jack Kelso and Dr. John Allen and the rude young giant Abe, of which I
have heard you tell so often as we sat in the firelight of a winter
evening. Best of all I remember the light of your own wisdom as it glowed
upon the story; how you found in Lincoln's words a prophecy of the great
struggle that has come. Since I have been steering my imagination on its
swift, long flights into the past I have been able to recall the very
words you used: "Lincoln said that a house divided against itself must
fall--that our nation could not endure part slave and part free, and it
was true. Since then the world has grown incredibly small. The peoples of
the earth have been drawn into one house and the affairs of each are the
concern of all. With a vain, boastful and unscrupulous degenerate on the
throne of Germany, it is likely to be a house divided against itself and
I fear a greater struggle than the world has ever seen between the bond
and the free. It will be a bloody contest but of its issue there can be
no doubt because the friends of freedom are the children of light and are
many. They will lay all they have upon its altars. They will be
unprepared and roughly handled for a time but their reserves of material
and moral strength which shall express themselves in ready sacrifice, are
beyond all calculation. Only one whose life spans the wide area from
Andrew Jackson to Woodrow Wilson and who has stood with Lincoln in his
lonely tower and watched the flowing of the tides for three score years
and ten, as I have, can be quite aware of the perils and resources of
Democracy."

All these and many other things which you have said to me, dear
grandfather, have helped me to understand this great thunderous drama in
which I have had a part. They have helped me to endure its perils and
bitter defeats. It was you who saw clearly from the first that this was
the final clash between the bond and the free--an effort of the great
house of God to purge itself, and you urged me to go to Canada and enlist
in the struggle. For this, too, I thank you. My wounds are dear to me,
knowing, as you have made me know, that I have come well by them fighting
not in the interest of Great Britain or France or Russia, but in the
cause of humanity. It is strange that among these men who are fighting
with me I have found only one or two who seem to have a vision of the
whole truth of this business.

Now I come to the point of my letter. I have an enlistment to urge upon
you in the cause of humanity and there are no wounds to go with it. When
I come home, as I shall be doing as soon as I am sufficiently mended, we
must go to work on the story of your life so that all who wish to do so
may know it as I know it. Let us go to it with all the diaries that you
and your father kept, aided by your memory, and give to the world its
first full view of the heart and soul of Lincoln. I have read all the
biographies and anecdotes of him and yet without the story as you tell it
he would have been a stranger to me. After this war, if I mistake not,
Democracy will command the interest of all men. It will be the theme of
themes. You tell me that we shall soon get into the struggle and turn
the scale. Well, if we do, we shall have to demonstrate a swiftness of
preparation and a power in the field which will astonish the world, and
when it is all over the world will want to know how this potent Democracy
of ours came about. The one name--Lincoln--with the background of your
story, especially the background, for the trouble with all the
biographies is a lack of background--will be the best answer we could
give I think. Of course there are other answers, but, as there are few
who dare to doubt, these days, that Lincoln is the greatest democrat
since Jesus Christ, if we can only present your knowledge to the world we
should do well. Again the great crowd, whom you and I desire to enlighten
if we can, do not read biography or history save under the compulsion of
the schools, so let us try only to tell the moving story as you have told
it to me, with Lincoln striding across the scene or taking the center of
the stage just as he was wont to do in your recollection of him. So we
will make them to know the giant of Democracy without trying.

Duty calls. What is your answer? Please let me know by cable. Meanwhile
I shall be thinking more about it. With love to all the family, from your
affectionate grandson, R.L.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

BOOK ONE

    I  Which Describes the Journey of Samson Henry Traylor and His Wife
       and Their Two Children and Their Dog Sambo through the Adirondack
       Wilderness in 1831 on Their Way to the Land of Plenty, and
       Especially Their Adventures in Bear Valley and No Santa Claus
       Land. Furthermore, It Describes the Soaping of the Brimsteads and
       the Capture of the Veiled Bear

   II  Wherein Is Recorded the Vivid Impression Made upon the Travelers
       by Their View of a Steam Engine and of the Famous Erie Canal.
       Wherein, Also, Is a Brief Account of Sundry Curious Characters Met
       on the Road and at a Celebration of the Fourth of July on the Big
       Waterway

  III  Wherein the Reader Is Introduced to Offut's Store and His Clerk
       Abe, and the Scholar Jack Kelso and His Cabin and His Daughter
       Bim, and Gets a First Look at Lincoln

   IV  Which Presents Other Log Cabin Folk and the First Steps in the
       Making of a New Home and Certain Incapacities of Abe

    V  In Which the Character of Bim Kelso Flashes Out in a Strange
       Adventure that Begins the Weaving of a Long Thread of Romance

   VI  Which Describes the Lonely Life in a Prairie Cabin and a Stirring
       Adventure on the Underground Railroad about the Time It Began
       Operations

  VII  In Which Mr. Eliphalet Biggs Gets Acquainted with Bim Kelso and
       Her Father

 VIII  Wherein Abe Makes Sundry Wise Remarks to the Boy Harry and
       Announces His Purpose to Be a Candidate for the Legislature at
       Kelso's Dinner Party

   IX  In Which Bim Kelso Makes History, While Abe and Harry and Other
       Good Citizens of New Salem Are Making an Effort to that End in the
       Indian War


BOOK TWO


    X  In Which Abe and Samson Wrestle and Some Raiders Come to Burn and
       Stay to Repent

   XI  In Which Abe, Elected to the Legislature, Gives What Comfort He
       Can to Ann Rutledge in the Beginning of Her Sorrows. Also He Goes
       to Springfield for New Clothes and Is Astonished by Its Pomp and
       the Change in Eli

  XII  Which Continues the Romance of Abe and Ann until the Former Leaves
       New Salem to Begin His Work in the Legislature. Also It Describes
       the Coloneling of Peter Lukins

 XIII  Wherein the Route of the Underground Railroad Is Surveyed and
       Samson and Harry Spend a Night in the Home of Henry Brimstead and
       Hear Surprising Revelations, Confidentially Disclosed, and Are
       Charmed by the Personality of His Daughter Annabel

  XIV  In Which Abe Returns from Vandalia and Is Engaged to Ann, and
       Three Interesting Slaves Arrive at the Home of Samson Traylor,
       Who, with Harry Needles, Has an Adventure of Much Importance on
       the Underground Road

   XV  Wherein Harry and Abe Ride Up to Springdale and Visit Kelso's and
       Learn of the Curious Lonesomeness of Eliphalet Biggs

  XVI  Wherein Young Mr. Lincoln Safely Passes Two Great Danger Points
       and Turns into the Highway of His Manhood


BOOK THREE


 XVII  Wherein Young Mr. Lincoln Betrays Ignorance of Two Highly
       Important Subjects, in Consequence of Which He Begins to Suffer
       Serious Embarrassment

XVIII  In Which Mr. Lincoln, Samson and Harry Take a Long Ride Together
       and the Latter Visit the Flourishing Little City of Chicago

  XIX  Wherein Is One of the Many Private Panics Which Followed the
       Bursting of the Bubble of Speculation

   XX  Which Tells of the Settling of Abe Lincoln and the Traylors in the
       Village of Springfield and of Samson's Second Visit to Chicago

  XXI  Wherein a Remarkable School of Political Science Begins Its
       Sessions in the Rear of Joshua Speed's Store. Also at Samson's
       Fireside Honest Abe Talks of the Authority of the Law and the
       Right of Revolution, and Later Brings a Suit against Lionel Davis

 XXII  Wherein Abe Lincoln Reveals His Method of Conducting a Lawsuit in
       the Case of Henry Brimstead et al. vs. Lionel Davis

XXIII  Which Presents the Pleasant Comedy of Individualism in the New
       Capital, and the Courtship of Lincoln and Mary Todd

 XXIV  Which Describes a Pleasant Holiday and a Pretty Stratagem

  XXV  Being a Brief Memoir by the Honorable and Venerable Man Known in
       These Pages as Josiah Traylor, Who Saw the Great Procession of
       Events between Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson and Especially
       the Making and the End of Lincoln




A MAN FOR THE AGES




BOOK ONE




CHAPTER I

WHICH DESCRIBES THE JOURNEY OF SAMSON HENRY TRAYLOR AND HIS WIFE AND
THEIR TWO CHILDREN AND THEIR DOG SAMBO THROUGH THE ADIRONDACK WILDERNESS
IN 1831 ON THEIR WAY TO THE LAND OF PLENTY, AND ESPECIALLY THEIR
ADVENTURES IN BEAR VALLEY AND NO SANTA CLAUS LAND. FURTHERMORE, IT
DESCRIBES THE SOAPING OF THE BRIMSTEADS AND THE CAPTURE OF THE VEILED
BEAR.


In the early summer of 1831 Samson Traylor and his wife, Sarah, and two
children left their old home near the village of Vergennes, Vermont, and
began their travels toward the setting sun with four chairs, a bread
board and rolling-pin, a feather bed and blankets, a small looking-glass,
a skillet, an axe, a pack basket with a pad of sole leather on the same,
a water pail, a box of dishes, a tub of salt pork, a rifle, a teapot, a
sack of meal, sundry small provisions and a violin, in a double wagon
drawn by oxen. It is a pleasure to note that they had a violin and were
not disposed to part with it. The reader must not overlook its full
historic significance. The stern, uncompromising spirit of the Puritan
had left the house of the Yankee before a violin could enter it. Humor
and the love of play had preceded and cleared a way for it. Where there
was a fiddle there were cheerful hearts. A young black shepherd dog with
tawny points and the name of Sambo followed the wagon or explored the
fields and woods it passed.

If we had been at the Congregational Church on Sunday we might have heard
the minister saying to Samson, after the service, that it was hard to
understand why the happiest family in the parish and the most beloved
should be leaving its ancestral home to go to a far, new country of which
little was known. We might also have heard Samson answer:

"It's awful easy to be happy here. We slide along in the same old groove,
that our fathers traveled, from Vergennes to Paradise. We work and play
and go to meetin' and put a shin plaster in the box and grow old and
narrow and stingy and mean and go up to glory and are turned into saints
and angels. Maybe that's the best thing that could happen to us, but
Sarah and I kind o' thought we'd try a new starting place and another
route to Heaven."

Then we might have seen the countenance of the minister assume a grave
and troubled look. "Samson, you must not pull down the pillars of this
temple," he said.

"No, it has done too much for me. I love its faults even. But we have
been called and must go. A great empire is growing up in the West. We
want to see it; we want to help build it."

The minister had acquired a sense of humor among those Yankees. Years
later in his autobiography he tells how deeply the words of Samson had
impressed him. He had answered:

"Think of us. I don't know what we shall do without your fun and the
music of your laugh at the pleasure parties. In addition to being the
best wrestler in the parish you are also its most able and sonorous
laugher."

"Yes, Sarah and I have got the laughing habit. I guess we need a touch
of misery to hold us down. But you will have other laughers. The seed has
been planted here and the soil is favorable."

Samson knew many funny stories and could tell them well. His heart was as
merry as _The Fisher's Hornpipe_. He used to say that he got the violin
to help him laugh, as he found his voice failing under the strain.

Sarah and Samson had been raised on adjoining farms just out of the
village. He had had little schooling, but his mind was active and well
inclined. Sarah had prosperous relatives in Boston and had had the
advantage of a year's schooling in that city. She was a comely girl of
a taste and refinement unusual in the place and time of her birth. Many
well favored youths had sought her hand, but, better than others, she
liked the big, masterful, good-natured, humorous Samson, crude as he was.
Naturally in her hands his timber had undergone some planing and
smoothing and his thought had been gently led into new and pleasant
ways. Sarah's Uncle Rogers in Boston had kept them supplied with some of
the best books and magazines of the time. These they had read aloud with
keen enjoyment. Moreover, they remembered what they read and cherished
and thought about it.

Let us take a look at them as they slowly leave the village of their
birth. The wagon is covered with tent cloth drawn over hickory arches.
They are sitting on a seat overlooking the oxen in the wagon front. Tears
are streaming down the face of the woman. The man's head is bent. His
elbows are resting on his knees; the hickory handle of his ox whip lies
across his lap, the lash at his feet. He seems to be looking down at his
boots, into the tops of which his trousers have been folded. He is a
rugged, blond, bearded man with kindly blue eyes and a rather prominent
nose. There is a striking expression of power in the head and shoulders
of Samson Traylor. The breadth of his back, the size of his wrists and
hands, the color of his face betoken a man of great strength. This
thoughtful, sorrowful attitude is the only evidence of emotion which he
betrays. In a few minutes he begins to whistle a lively tune.

The boy Josiah--familiarly called Joe--sits beside his mother. He is a
slender, sweet-faced lad. He is looking up wistfully at his mother. The
little girl Betsey sits between him and her father. That evening they
stopped at the house of an old friend some miles up the dusty road to
the north. "Here we are--goin' west," Samson shouted to the man at the
door-step.

He alighted and helped his family out of the wagon. "You go right
in--I'll take care o' the oxen," said the man.

Samson started for the house with the girl under one arm and the boy
under the other. A pleasant-faced woman greeted them with a hearty
welcome at the door.

"You poor man! Come right in," she said.

"Poor! I'm the richest man in the world," said he. "Look at the gold on
that girl's head--curly, fine gold, too--the best there is. She's
Betsey--my little toy woman--half past seven years old--blue eyes--helps
her mother get tired every day. Here's my toy man Josiah--yes, brown hair
and brown eyes like Sarah--heart o' gold--helps his mother, too--six
times one year old."

"What pretty faces!" said the woman as she stooped and kissed them.

"Yes, ma'am. Got 'em from the fairies," Samson went on. "They have all
kinds o' heads for little folks, an' I guess they color 'em up with the
blood o' roses an' the gold o' buttercups an' the blue o' violets. Here's
this wife o' mine. She's richer'n I am. She owns all of us. We're her
slaves."

"Looks as young as she did the day she was married--nine years ago," said
the woman.

"Exactly!" Samson exclaimed. "Straight as an arrow and proud! I don't
blame her. She's got enough to make her proud I say. I fall in love again
every time I look into her big, brown eyes."

The talk and laughter brought the dog into the house.

"There's Sambo, our camp follower," said Samson. "He likes us, one and
all, but he often feels sorry for us because we can not feel the joy that
lies in buried bones and the smell of a liberty pole or a gate post."

They had a joyous evening and a restful night with these old friends and
resumed their journey soon after daylight. They ferried across the lake
at Burlington and fared away over the mountains and through the deep
forest on the Chateaugay trail.

Since the Pilgrims landed between the measureless waters and the pathless
wilderness they and their descendants had been surrounded by the lure of
mysteries. It filled the imagination of the young with gleams of golden
promise. The love of adventure, the desire to explore the dark, infested
and beautiful forest, the dream of fruitful sunny lands cut with water
courses, shored with silver and strewn with gold beyond it--these were
the only heritage of their sons and daughters save the strength and
courage of the pioneer. How true was this dream of theirs gathering
detail and allurement as it passed from sire to son! On distant plains to
the west were lands more lovely and fruitful than any of their vision; in
mountains far beyond was gold enough to gild the dome of the heavens, as
the sun was wont to do at eventide, and silver enough to put a fairly
respectable moon in it. Yet for generations their eyes were not to see,
their hands were not to touch these things. They were only to push their
frontier a little farther to the west and hold the dream and pass it on
to their children.

Those early years of the nineteenth century held the first days of
fulfillment. Samson and Sarah Traylor had the old dream in their hearts
when they first turned their faces to the West. For years Sarah had
resisted it, thinking of the hardships and perils in the way of the
mover. Samson, a man of twenty-nine when he set out from his old home,
was said to be "always chasing the bird in the bush." He was never
content with the thing in hand. There were certain of their friends who
promised to come and join them when, at last, they should have found the
land of plenty. But most of the group that bade them good-by thought it
a foolish enterprise and spoke lightly of Samson when they were gone.
America has undervalued the brave souls who went west in wagons, without
whose sublime courage and endurance the plains would still be an unplowed
wilderness. Often we hear them set down as seedy, shiftless dreamers who
could not make a living at home. They were mostly the best blood of the
world and the noblest of God's missionaries. Who does not honor them
above the thrifty, comfort loving men and women who preferred to stay at
home, where risks were few, the supply of food sure and sufficient and
the consolations of friendship and religion always at hand. Samson and
Sarah preferred to enlist and take their places in the front battle line
of Civilization. They had read a little book called _The Country of the
Sangamon_. The latter was a word of the Pottawatomies meaning land of
plenty. It was the name of a river in Illinois draining "boundless,
flowery meadows of unexampled beauty and fertility, belted with timber,
blessed with shady groves, covered with game and mostly level, without a
stick or a stone to vex the plowman." Thither they were bound to take up
a section of government land.

They stopped for a visit with Elisha Howard and his wife, old friends
of theirs, who lived in the village of Malone, which was in Franklin
County, New York. There they traded their oxen for a team of horses. They
were large gray horses named Pete and Colonel. The latter was fat and
good-natured. His chief interest in life was food. Pete was always
looking for food and perils. Colonel was the near horse. Now and then
Samson threw a sheepskin over his back and put the boy on it and tramped
along within arm's reach of Joe's left leg. This was a great delight to
the little lad.

They proceeded at a better pace to the Black River country, toward which,
in the village of Canton, they tarried again for a visit with Captain
Moody and Silas Wright, both of whom had taught school in the town of
Vergennes.

They proceeded through DeKalb, Richville and Gouverneur and Antwerp and
on to the Sand Plains. They had gone far out of their way for a look at
these old friends of theirs.

Every day the children would ask many questions, as they rode along,
mainly about the beasts and birds in the dark shadows of the forest
through which they passed. These were answered patiently by their father
and mother and every answer led to other queries.

"You're a funny pair," said their father one day. "You have to turn over
every word we say to see what's under it. I used to be just like ye, used
to go out in the lot and tip over every stick and stone I could lift to
see the bugs and crickets run. You're always hopin' to see a bear or a
panther or a fairy run out from under my remarks."

"Wonder why we don't see no bears?" Joe asked. "'Cause they always see us
first or hear us comin'," said his father. "If you're goin' to see ol'
Uncle Bear ye got to pay the price of admission."

"What's that?" Joe asked.

"Got to go still and careful so you'll see him first. If this old wagon
didn't talk so loud and would kind o' go on its tiptoes maybe we'd see
him. He don't like to be seen. Seems so he was kind o' shamed of himself,
an' I wouldn't wonder if be was. He's done a lot o' things to be 'shamed
of."

"What's he done?" Joe asked.

"Ketched sheep and pigs and fawns and run off with 'em."

"What does he do with 'em?"

"Eats 'em up. Now you quit. Here's a lot o' rocks and mud and I got to
'tend to business. You tackle yer mother and chase her up and down the
hills a while and let me get my breath."

Samson's diary tells how, at the top of the long, steep hills he used to
cut a small tree by the roadside and tie its butt to the rear axle and
hang on to its branches while his wife drove the team. This held their
load, making an effective brake.

Traveling through the forest, as they had been doing for weeks, while the
day waned, they looked for a brookside on which they could pass the night
with water handy. Samson tethered, fed and watered their horses, and
while Sarah and the children built a fire and made tea and biscuits, he
was getting bait and catching fish in the stream.

"In a few minutes from the time I wet my hook a mess of trout would be
dressed and sizzling, with a piece of salt pork, in the pan, or it was a
bad day for fishing," he writes.

After supper the wagon was partly unloaded, the feather bed laid upon the
planks under the wagon roof and spread with blankets. Then Samson sang
songs and told stories or played upon the violin to amuse the family. The
violin invariably woke the birds in the tree-tops, and some, probably
thrushes or warblers or white throated sparrows, began twittering. Now
and then one would express his view of the disturbance with a little
phrase of song. Often the player paused to hear these musical whispers
"up in the gallery," as he was wont to call it.

Often if the others were weary and depressed he would dance merrily
around the fire, playing a lively tune, with Sambo glad to lend a helping
foot and much noise to the program. If mosquitos and flies were
troublesome Samson built smudges, filling their camp with the smoky
incense of dead leaves, in which often the flavor of pine and balsam was
mingled. By and by the violin was put away and all knelt by the fire
while Sarah prayed aloud for protection through the night. So it will be
seen that they carried with them their own little theater, church and
hotel.

Soon after darkness fell, Sarah and the children lay down for the night,
while Samson stretched out with his blankets by the fire in good weather,
the loaded musket and the dog Sambo lying beside him. Often the howling
of wolves in the distant forest kept them awake, and the dog muttering
and barking for hours.

Samson woke the camp at daylight and a merry song was his reveille while
he led the horses to their drink.

"Have a good night?" Sarah would ask.

"Perfect!" he was wont to answer. "But when the smudges went out the
mosquiters got to peckin' my face."

"Mine feels like a pincushion," Sarah would often answer. "Will you heat
up a little water for us to wash with?"

"You better believe I will. Two more hedge hogs last night, but Samba let
'em alone."

Sambo had got his mouth sored by hedge hogs some time before and had
learned better than to have any fuss with them.

When they set out in the morning Samson was wont to say to the little
lad, who generally sat beside him: "Well, my boy, what's the good word
this morning?" Whereupon Joe would say, parrot like:

"God help us all and make His face to shine upon us."

"Well said!" his father would answer, and so the day's journey began.

Often, near its end, they came to some lonely farmhouse. Always Samson
would stop and go to the door to ask about the roads, followed by little
Joe and Betsey with secret hopes. One of these hopes was related to
cookies and maple sugar and buttered bread and had been cherished since
an hour of good fortune early in the trip and encouraged by sundry
good-hearted women along the road. Another was the hope of seeing a
baby--mainly, it should be said, the hope of Betsey. Joe's interest was
merely an echo of hers. He regarded babies with an open mind, as it were,
for the opinions of his sister still had some weight with him, she being
a year and a half older than he, but babies invariably disappointed him,
their capabilities being so restricted. To be sure, they could make quite
a noise, and the painter was said to imitate it, but since Joe had
learned that they couldn't bite he had begun to lose respect for them.
Still, not knowing what might happen, he always took a look at every
baby.

The children were lifted out of the wagon to stretch their legs at
sloughs and houses. They were sure to be close behind the legs of their
father when he stood at a stranger's door. Then, the night being near,
they were always invited to put their horses in the barn and tarry until
next morning. This was due in part to the kindly look and voice of
Samson, but mostly to the wistful faces of the little children--a fact
unsuspected by their parents. What motherly heart could resist the silent
appeal of children's faces or fail to understand it? Those were memorable
nights for Sarah and Joe and Betsey. In a letter to her brother the woman
said:

"You don't know how good it seemed to see a woman and talk to her, and we
talked and talked until midnight, after all the rest were asleep. She let
me hold the baby in my lap until it was put to bed. How good it felt to
have a little warm body in my arms again and feel it breathing! In all my
life I never saw a prettier baby. It felt good to be in a real house and
sleep in a soft, warm bed and to eat jelly and cookies and fresh meat and
potatoes and bread and butter. Samson played for them and kept them
laughing with his stories until bedtime. They wouldn't take a cent and
gave us a dozen eggs in a basket and a piece of venison when we went
away. Their name is Sanford and I have promised to write to them. They
are good Christian folks and they say that maybe they will join us in the
land of plenty if we find it all we expect."

They had two rainy, cold days, with a northeast wind blowing and deep mud
in the roads. The children complained of the cold. After a few miles'
travel they stopped at an old hunter's camp facing a great mossy rock
near the road.

"Guess we'll stop here for a visit," said Samson.

"Who we goin' to visit?" Joe asked.

"The trees and the fairies," said his father. "Don't ye hear 'em askin'
us to stop? They say the wind is blowin' bad an' that we'd better stop
an' make some good weather. They offer us a house and a roof to cover it
and some wood to burn. I guess we'll be able to make our own sunshine in
a few minutes."

Samson peeled some bark and repaired the roof and, with his flint and
tinder and some fat pine, built a roaring fire against the rock and soon
had his family sitting, in its warm glow, under shelter. Near by was
another rude framework of poles set in crotches partly covered with bark
which, with a little repairing, made a sufficient shelter for Pete and
Colonel. Down by a little brook a few rods away he cut some balsams and
returned presently with his arms full of the fragrant boughs. These he
dried in the heat of the fire and spread in a thick mat on the ground
under the lean-to. It was now warm with heat, reflected from the side of
the great rock it faced. The light of the leaping flames fell upon the
travelers.

"Ye see ye can make yer own weather and fill it with sunshine if ye only
know how," said Samson, as he sat down and brushed a coal out of the
ashes and swiftly picked it up with his fingers and put it into the bowl
of his clay pipe. "Mother and I read in a book that the wood was full o'
sunlight all stored up and ready for us to use. Ye just set it afire and
out comes the warm sunlight for days like this. God takes pretty good
care of us--don't He?"

The heat of other fires had eaten away a few inches of the base of the
rock. Under its overhang some one had written with a black coal the words
"Bear Valley Camp." On this suggestion the children called for a bear
story, and lying back on the green mat of boughs, Samson told them of the
great bear of Camel's Hump which his father had slain, and many other
tales of the wilderness.

They lived two days in this fragrant, delightful shelter until the storm
had passed and the last of their corn meal had been fed to the horses.
They were never to forget the comfort and the grateful odors of their
camp in Bear Valley.

On a warm, bright day in the sand country after the storm they came to a
crude, half finished, frame house at the edge of a wide clearing. The
sand lay in drifts on one side of the road. It had evidently moved in the
last wind. A sickly vegetation covered the field. A ragged, barefooted
man and three scrawny, ill clad children stood in the dooryard. It was
noon-time. A mongrel dog, with a bit of the hound in him, came bounding
and barking toward the wagon and pitched upon Sambo and quickly got the
worst of it. Sambo, after much experience in self-defense, had learned
that the best way out of such trouble was to seize a leg and hang on.
This he did. The mongrel began to yelp. Samson lifted both dogs by the
backs of their necks, broke the hold of Sambo and tossed aside the
mongrel, who ran away whining.

"That reminds me of a bull that tackled a man over in Vermont," said he.
"The man had a club in his hand. He dodged and grabbed the bull's tail
and beat him all over the lot. As the bull roared, the man hollered:
'I'd like to know who began this fuss anyway.'"

The stranger laughed.

"Is that your house?" Samson asked.

The man stepped nearer and answered in a low, confidential tone:

"Say, mister, this is a combination poorhouse and idiot asylum. I am the
idiot. These are the poor."

He pointed to the children.

"You don't talk like an idiot," said Samson.

The man looked around and leaned over the wheel as if about to impart a
secret.

"Say, I'll tell ye," he said in a low tone. "A real, first-class idiot
never does. You ought to see my actions."

"This land is an indication that you're right," Samson laughed.

"It proves it," the stranger whispered.

"Have you any water here?" Samson asked.

The stranger leaned nearer and said in his most confidential tone: "Say,
mister, it's about the best in the United States. Right over yonder in
the edge o' the woods--a spring-cold as ice--Simon-pure water. 'Bout the
only thing this land'll raise is water."

"This land looks to me about as valuable as so much sheet lightnin' and
I guess it can move just about as quick," said Samson.

The stranger answered in a low tone: "Say, I'll tell ye, it's a wild
cow--don't stand still long 'nough to give ye time to git anything out of
it. I've toiled and prayed, but it's hard to get much out of it."

"Praying won't do this land any good," Samson answered. "What it needs
is manure and plenty of it. You can't raise anything here but fleas. It
isn't decent to expect God to help run a flea farm. He knows too much for
that, and if you keep it up He'll lose all respect for ye. If you were to
buy another farm and bring it here and put it down on top o' this one,
you could probably make a living. I wouldn't like to live where the wind
could dig my potatoes."

Again the stranger leaned toward Samson and said in a half-whisper: "Say,
mister, I wouldn't want you to mention it, but talkin' o' fleas, I'm like
a dog with so many of 'em that he don't have time to eat. Somebody has
got to soap him or he'll die. You see, I traded my farm over in Vermont
for five hundred acres o' this sheet lightnin', unsight an' unseen. We
was all crazy to go West an' here we are. If it wasn't for the deer an'
the fish I guess we'd 'a' starved to death long ago."

"Where did ye come from?"

"Orwell, Vermont."

"What's yer name?"

"Henry Brimstead," the stranger whispered.

"Son of Elijah Brimstead?"

"Yes, sir."

Samson took his hand and shook it warmly. "Well, I declare!" he
exclaimed. "Elijah Brimstead was a friend o' my father."

"Who are you?" Brimstead asked.

"I'm one o' the Traylors o' Vergennes."

"My father used to buy cattle of Henry Traylor."

"Henry was my father. Haven't you let 'em know about your bad luck?"

The man resumed his tone of confidence. "Say, I'll tell ye," he answered.
"A man that's as big a fool as I am ought not to advertise it. A brain
that has treated its owner as shameful as mine has treated me should be
compelled to do its own thinkin' er die. I've invented some things that
may sell. I've been hopin' my luck would turn."

"It'll turn when you turn it," Samson assured him.

Brimstead thoughtfully scuffed the sand with his bare foot. In half a
moment he stepped to the wheel and imparted this secret: "Say, mister, if
you've any more doubt o' my mental condition, I'm goin' to tell ye that
they've discovered valuable ore in my land two miles back o' this road,
an' I'm hopin' to make a fortune. Don't that prove my case?"

"Any man that puts his faith in the bowels of the earth can have my
vote," said Samson.

Brimstead leaned close to Samson's ear and said in a tone scarcely
audible:

"My brother Robert has his own idiot asylum. It's a real handsome one an'
he has made it pay, but I wouldn't swap with him."

Samson smiled, remembering that Robert had a liquor store. "Look here,
Henry Brimstead, we're hungry," he said. "If ye furnish the water, we'll
skirmish around for bread and give ye as good a dinner as ye ever had in
yer life."

Henry took the horses to his barn and watered and fed them. Then he
brought two pails of water from the spring. Meanwhile Samson started
a fire in a grove of small poplars by the roadside and began broiling
venison, and Sarah got out the bread board and the flour and the
rolling-pin and the teapot. As she waited for the water she called the
three strange children to her side. The oldest was a girl of thirteen,
with a face uncommonly refined and attractive. In spite of her threadbare
clothes, she had a neat and cleanly look and gentle manners. The youngest
was a boy of four. They were a pathetic trio.

Joe had been telling them about Santa Claus and showing them a jack-knife
which had come down the chimney in his pack at Christmas time and
describing a dress of his mother's that had gold and silver buttons
on it. The little six-year-old girl had asked him many questions about
his mother and had stood for some moments looking up into Sarah's face.
The girl timidly felt the dress and hair of the woman and touched her
wedding ring.

"Come and wash your faces and hands," Joe demanded as soon as the water
came.

This they did while he poured from a dipper.

"Nice people always wash before they eat," he reminded them.

Then he showed them his bear stick, with the assurance that it had killed
a hedge hog, omitting the unimportant fact that his father had wielded
it. The ferocity of hedge hogs was a subject on which he had large
information. He told how one of their party had come near getting his
skin sewed on a barn door. A hedge hog had come and asked Sambo if he
would have some needles. Sambo had never seen a hedge hog, so he said
that he guessed he would.

Then the hedge hog said: "Help yourself."

Sambo went to take some and just got his face full of 'em so it looked
like a head o' barley. They had to be took out with a pinchers or they'd
'a' sewed his skin on to a barn door. That was their game. They tried to
sew everybody's skin on a barn door.

Every night the hedge hog came around and said: "Needles, needles,
anybody want some needles."

Now Sambo always answered: "No thank you, I've had enough."

"Where's your mother?" Sarah asked of the ten-year-old girl.

"Dead. Died when my little brother was born."

"Who takes care of you?"

"Father and--God. Father says God does most of it."

"Oh dear!" Sarah exclaimed, with a look of pity.

They had a good dinner of fresh biscuit and honey and venison and eggs
and tea. While they were eating Samson told Brimstead of the land of
plenty.

After dinner, while Brimstead was bringing the team, one of his children,
the blonde, pale, tattered little girl of six, climbed into the wagon
seat and sat holding a small rag doll, which Sarah had given her. When
they were ready to go she stubbornly refused to get down.

"I'm goin' away," she said. "I'm goin' aw-a-ay off to find my mother. I
don't like this place. There ain't no Santa Claus here. I'm goin' away."

She clung to the wagon seat and cried loudly when her father took her
down.

"Ain't that enough to break a man's heart?" he said with a sorrowful
look.

Then Samson turned to Brimstead and asked:

"Look here, Henry Brimstead, are you a drinking man? Honor bright now."

"Never drink a thing but water and tea."

"Do you know of anybody who'll give ye anything for what you own here?"

"There's a man in the next town who offered me three hundred and fifty
dollars for my interest."

"How far is it?"

"Three miles."

"Come along with us and get the money if you can. I'll help ye fit up and
go where ye can earn a living."

"I'd like to, but my horse is lame and I can't leave the children."

"Put 'em right in this wagon and come on. If there's a livery in the
place, I'll send ye home."

So the children rode in the wagon and Samson and Brimstead walked, while
Sarah drove the team to the next village. There the good woman bought new
clothes for the whole Brimstead family and Brimstead sold his interest in
the sand plains and bought a good pair of horses, with harness and some
cloth for a wagon cover, and had fifty dollars in his pocket and a new
look in his face. He put his children on the backs of the horses and led
them to his old home, with a sack of provisions on his shoulder. He was
to take the track of the Traylors next day and begin his journey to the
shores of the Sangamon.

Samson had asked about him in the village and learned that he was an
honest man who had suffered bad luck. A neighbor's wife had taken his
children for two years, but bad health had compelled her to give them up.

"God does the most of it," Sarah quoted from the young girl, as they rode
on. "I guess He's saved 'em from the poorhouse to-day. I hope they'll
ketch up with us. I'd like to look after those children a little. They
need a mother so."

"They'll ketch up all right," said Samson. "We're loaded heavier than
they'll be and goin' purty slow. They'll be leavin' No Santa Claus Land
to-morrow mornin'. Seems so God spoke to me when that girl said there
wa'n't no Santa Claus there."

"No Santa Claus Land is a good name for it," said Sarah.

They got into a bad swale that afternoon and Samson had to cut some
corduroy to make a footing for team and wagon and do much prying with the
end of a heavy pole under the front axle. By and by the horses pulled
them out.

"When ol' Colonel bends his neck things have to move, even if he is up to
his belly in the mud," said Samson.

As the day waned they came to a river in the deep woods. It was an
exquisite bit of forest with the bells of a hermit thrush ringing in one
of its towers. Their call and the low song of the river were the only
sounds in the silence. The glow of the setting sun which lighted the
western windows of the forest had a color like that of the music-golden.
Long shafts of it fell through the tree columns upon the road here and
there. Our weary travelers stopped on the rude plank bridge that crossed
the river. Odors of balsam and pine and tamarack came in a light, cool
breeze up the river valley.

"It smells like Bear Valley," said Sarah.

"What was that poetry you learned for the church party?" Samson asked.

"I guess the part of it you're thinking of is:

  'And west winds with musky wing
  Down the cedarn alleys fling
  'Nard and Cassia's balmy smells.'"

"That's it," said Samson. "I guess we'll stop at this tavern till
to-morrow."

Joe was asleep and they laid him on the blankets until supper was ready.

Soon after supper Samson shot a deer which had waded into the rapids.
Fortunately, it made the opposite shore before it fell. All hands spent
that evening dressing the deer and jerking the best of the meat. This
they did by cutting the meat into strips about the size of a man's hand
and salting and laying it on a rack, some two feet above a slow fire, and
covering it with green boughs. The heat and smoke dried the meat in the
course of two or three hours and gave it a fine flavor. Delicious beyond
any kind of meat is venison treated in this manner. If kept dry, it will
retain its flavor and its sweetness for a month or more.

Samson was busy with this process long after the others had gone to bed.
When it was nearly finished he left the meat on the rack, the fire
beneath it having burned low, crossed the river to the wagon, got his
blanket, reloaded his gun and lay down to sleep with the dog beside him.

Some hours later he was awakened by "a kind of a bull beller," as he
described it. The dog ran barking across the river. Samson seized the gun
and followed him. The first dim light of the morning showed through the
tree-tops. Some big animal was growling and roaring and rolling over and
over in a clump of bushes near the meat rack. In half a moment it rolled
out upon the open ground near Samson. The latter could now see that it
was a large black bear engaged in a desperate struggle with the pack
basket. The bear had forced his great head into the top of it and its
hoop had got a firm hold on his neck. He was sniffing and growling and
shaking his head and striking with both fore paws to free himself. Sambo
had laid hold of his stub tail and the bear was trying in vain to reach
him, with the dog dodging as he held on. The movements of both were so
lively that Samson had to step like a dancer to keep clear of them. The
bear, in sore trouble, leaped toward him and the swaying basket touched
the side of the man. Back into the bushes and out again they struggled,
Sambo keeping his hold. A more curious and ludicrous sight never
gladdened the eye of a hunter. Samson had found it hard to get a chance
to shoot at the noisy, swift torrent of fur. Suddenly the bear rose on
his hind legs and let out an angry woof and gave the basket a terrific
shaking. In this brief pause a ball from the rifle went to his heart and
he fell. Samson jumped forward, seized the dog's collar and pulled him
away while the bear struggled in his death throes. Then the man started
for camp, while his great laugh woke distant echoes in the forest.

"Bear steak for dinner!" he shouted to Sarah and the children, who stood
shivering with fright on the bridge.

Again his laughter filled the woods with sound.

"Gracious Peter! What in the world was it?" Sarah asked.

"Well, ye see, ol' Uncle Bear came to steal our bacon an' the bacon kind
o' stole him," said Samson, between peals of laughter, the infection of
which went to the heart and lips of every member of the family. "Shoved
his head into the pack basket and the pack basket wouldn't let go. It
said: 'This is the first time I ever swallered a bear, an' if you don't
mind I'll stay on the outside. I kind o' like you.' But the bear did
mind. He didn't want to be et up by a basket. He'd always done the
swallerin' himself an' he hollered an' swore at the basket an' tried to
scare it off. Oh, I tell ye he was awful sassy and impudent to that old
thing, but it hung on and the way he flounced around, with Sambo clingin'
to his tail, and the bear thinkin' that he was bein' swallered at both
ends, was awful. Come an' see him."

They went to the bear, now dead. Sambo ran ahead of them and laid hold of
the bear's stump of a tail and shook it savagely, as if inclined to take
too much credit upon himself. The hoop of the pack basket had so tight a
hold upon the bear's neck that it took a strong pull to get it back over
his head. One side of the basket had been protected from the bear's claws
by a pad of sole leather--the side which, when the basket was in use,
rested on the back of its carrier. His claws had cut nearly through it
and torn a carrying strap into shreds.

"I guess he'd 'a' tore off his veil if the dog had give him a little more
time," said Samson. "Ol' Uncle Bear had trouble at both ends and didn't
know which way to turn."

A good-sized piece of bacon still, lay in the bottom of the basket.

"I wouldn't wonder if that would taste pretty beary now," said Samson, as
he surveyed the bacon. "It's been sneezed at and growled on so much.
Betsey, you take that down to the shore o' the river there and wash the
bear out of it. I'll skin him while yer mother is gettin' breakfast.
There's plenty o' live coals under the venison rack, I guess."

They set out rather late that morning. As usual, Joe stood by the head of
Colonel while the latter lapped brown sugar from the timid palm of the
boy. Then the horse was wont to touch the face of Joe with his big, hairy
lips as a tribute to his generosity. Colonel had seemed to acquire a
singular attachment for the boy and the dog, while Pete distrusted both
of them. He had never a moment's leisure, anyhow, being always busy with
his work or the flies. A few breaks in the pack basket had been repaired
with green withes. It creaked with its load of jerked venison when put
aboard. The meat of the bear was nicely wrapped in his hide and placed
beside it. They sold meat and hide and bounty rights in the next village
they reached for thirty long shillings.

"That cheers up the ol' weasel," Samson declared, as they went on.

"He got a hard knock after we met the Brimsteads," said Sarah.

"Yes, ma'am! and I'm not sorry either. He's got to come out of his hole
once in a while. I tell ye God kind o' spoke to us back there in No Santa
Claus Land. He kind o' spoke to us."

After a little silence, Sarah said: "I guess He's apt to speak in the
voices of little children."

His weasel was a dried pig's bladder of unusual size in which he carried
his money. Samson had brought with him a fairly good quantity of money
for those days. In a smaller bladder he carried his tobacco.

Farther on the boy got a sore throat. Sarah bound a slice of pork around
it and Samson built a camp by the roadside, in which, after a good fire
was started, they gave him a hemlock sweat. This they did by steeping
hemlock in pails of hot water and, while the patient sat in a chair by
the fireside, a blanket was spread about him and pinned close to his
neck. Under the blanket they put the pails of steaming hemlock tea. After
his sweat and a day and night in bed, with a warm fire burning in front
of the shanty, Joe was able to resume his seat in the wagon. They spoke
of the Brimsteads and thought it strange that they had not come along.

On the twenty-ninth day after their journey began they came in sight of
the beautiful green valley of the Mohawk. As they looked from the hills
they saw the roof of the forest dipping down to the river shores and
stretching far to the east and west and broken, here and there, by small
clearings. Soon they could see the smoke and spires of the thriving
village of Utica.




CHAPTER II

WHEREIN IS RECORDED THE VIVID IMPRESSION MADE UPON THE TRAVELERS BY THEIR
VIEW OF A STEAM ENGINE AND OF THE FAMOUS ERIE CANAL. WHEREIN, ALSO, IS A
BRIEF ACCOUNT OF SUNDRY CURIOUS CHARACTERS MET ON THE ROAD AND AT A
CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTH OF JULY ON THE BIG WATERWAY.


At Utica they bought provisions and a tin trumpet for Joe, and a doll
with a real porcelain face for Betsey, and turned into the great main
thoroughfare of the north leading eastward to Boston and westward to
a shore of the midland seas. This road was once the great trail of the
Iroquois, by them called the Long House, because it had reached from the
Hudson to Lake Erie, and in their day had been well roofed with foliage.
Here the travelers got their first view of a steam engine. The latter
stood puffing and smoking near the village of Utica, to the horror and
amazement of the team and the great excitement of those in the wagon. The
boy clung to his father for fear of it.

Samson longed to get out of the wagon and take a close look at the noisy
monster, but his horses were rearing in their haste to get away, and even
a short stop was impossible. Sambo, with his tail between his legs, ran
ahead, in a panic, and took refuge in some bushes by the roadside.

"What was that, father?" the boy asked when the horses had ceased to
worry over this new peril.

"A steam engyne," he answered. "Sarah, did ye get a good look at it?"

"Yes; if that don't beat all the newfangled notions I ever heard of," she
exclaimed.

"It's just begun doin' business," said Samson.

"What does it do?" Joe asked.

"On a railroad track it can grab hold of a house full o' folks and run
off with it. Goes like the wind, too."

"Does it eat 'em up?" Joe asked.

"No. It eats wood and oil and keeps yellin' for more. I guess it could
eat a cord o' wood and wash it down with half a bucket o' castor oil in
about five minutes. It snatches folks away to some place and drops 'em.
I guess it must make their hair stand up and their teeth chatter."

"Does it hurt anybody?" Joe asked hopefully.

"Well, sir, if anybody wanted to be hurt and got in its way, I rather
guess he'd succeed purty well. It's powerful. Why, if a man was to ketch
hold of the tail of a locomotive, and hang on, it would jerk the toe
nails right off him."

Joe began to have great respect for locomotives.

Soon they came in view of the famous Erie Canal, hard by the road.
Through it the grain of the far West had just begun moving eastward in a
tide that was flowing from April to December. Big barges, drawn by mules
and horses on its shore, were cutting the still waters of the canal. They
stopped and looked at the barges and the long tow ropes and the tugging
animals.

"There is a real artificial river, hundreds o' miles long, hand made of
the best material, water tight, no snags or rocks or other imperfections,
durability guaranteed," said Samson. "It has made the name of DeWitt
Clinton known everywhere."

"I wonder what next!" Sarah exclaimed.

They met many teams and passed other movers going west, and some
prosperous farms on a road wider and smoother than any they had traveled.
They camped that night, close by the river, with a Connecticut family on
its way to Ohio with a great load of household furniture on one wagon and
seven children in another. There were merry hours for the young, and
pleasant visiting between the older folk that evening at the fireside.
There was much talk among the latter about the great Erie Canal.

So they fared along through Canandaigua and across the Genesee to the
village of Rochester and on through Lewiston and up the Niagara River to
the Falls, and camped where they could see the great water flood and hear
its muffled thunder. When nearing the latter they overtook a family of
poor Irish emigrants, of the name of Flanagan, who shared their camp site
at the Falls. The Flanagans were on their way to Michigan and had come
from the old country three years before and settled in Broome County, New
York. They, too, were on their way to a land of better promise. Among
them was a rugged, freckled, red-headed lad, well along in his teens, of
the name of Dennis, who wore a tall beaver hat, tilted saucily on one
side of his head, and a ragged blue coat with brass buttons, as he walked
beside the oxen, whip in hand, with trousers tucked in the tops of his
big cowhide boots. There was also a handsome young man in this party of
the name of John McNeil, who wore a ruffled shirt and swallow-tail coat,
now much soiled by the journey. He listened to Samson's account of the
Sangamon country and said that he thought he would go there. He had
traded hats on the way with Dennis, who had been deeply impressed by the
majestic look of the beaver and had given a silver breast pin and fifteen
shillings to boot.

A jolly lad was Dennis, who danced jigs, on a flat rock by the riverside,
as Samson played _The Irish Washerman_ and _The Fisher's Hornpipe_. In
the midst of the fun a puff of wind snatched the tall beaver hat from his
head and whirled it over the side of the cliff into the foliage of a
clump of cedars growing out of the steep cliff-side, ten feet or so below
its top. Before any one could stop him the brave Irish lad had scrambled
down the steep to the cedars--a place of some peril, for they hung over
a precipice more than a hundred feet deep above the river. He got his
treasure, but Samson had to help him back with a rope.

The latter told of the veiled bear, and when the story was finished he
said to the Irish lad: "It will not do you any harm to remember that it
is easier to get into trouble than to get out of it. In my opinion one
clean-hearted Irish boy is worth more than all the beaver hats in
creation."

Sarah gave the Irish family a good supply of cookies and jerked venison
before she bade them good-by.

When our travelers left, next morning, they stopped for a last look at
the great Falls.

"Children," said Samson, "I want you to take a good look at that. It's
the most wonderful thing in the world and maybe you'll never see it
again."

"The Indians used to think that the Great Spirit was in this river," said
Sarah.

"Kind o' seems to me they were right," Samson remarked thoughtfully.
"Kind o' seems as if the great spirit of America was in that water. It
moves on in the way it wills and nothing can stop it. Everything in its
current goes along with it."

"And only the strong can stand the journey," said Sarah.

These words were no doubt inspired by an ache in her bones. A hard seat
and the ceaseless jolting of the wagon through long, hot, dusty days had
wearied them. Even their hearts were getting sore as they thought of the
endless reaches of the roads ahead. Samson stuffed a sack with straw and
put it under her and the children on the seat. At a word of complaint he
was wont to say:

"I know it's awful tiresome, but we got to have patience. We're goin'
to get used to it and have a wonderful lot of fun. The time'll pass
quick--you see."

Then he would sing and get them all laughing with some curious bit of
drollery. They spent the night of July third at a tavern in Buffalo, then
a busy, crude and rapidly growing center for the shipping east and west.
Next day there was to be a great celebration of the Fourth of July in
Buffalo and our travelers had stopped there to witness it. The bells
began to ring and the cannon to bomb at sunrise. It was a day of great
excitement for the west-bound travelers. The horses trembled in their
stalls. Sambo took refuge in Colonel's manger and would not come out.

There were many emigrants on their way to the far West in the crowd--men,
women and children and babies in arms--Irish, English, Germans and
Yankees. There were also well dressed, handsome young men from the
colleges of New England going out to be missionaries "between the desert
and the sown."

Buffalo, on the edge of the midland seas, had the flavor of the rank, new
soil in it those days--and especially that day, when it was thronged with
rough coated and rougher tongued, swearing men on a holiday, stevedores
and boatmen off the lakes and rivers of the middle border--some of whom
had had their training on the Ohio and Mississippi. There was much
drunkenness and fighting in the crowded streets. Some of the carriers and
handlers of American commerce vented their enthusiasm in song.

In Samson's diary was the refrain of one of these old lake songs, which
he had set down, as best he could, after the event:

  "Then here's three cheers for the skipper an' his crew,
     Give 'er the wind an' let 'er go, for the boys'll put 'er through;
   I thought 'twould blow the whiskers right off o' you an' me,
     On our passage up from Buffalo to Milwaukee-ee."

Each of these rough men had dressed to his own fancy. Many wore fine
boots of calf skin with red tops, drawn over their trousers, and high
heels and blue and red shirts and broad brimmed straw hats. A long haired
man, in buckskin leggings and moccasins, with a knife at his belt and too
much whisky beneath it, amused a crowd by a loud proclamation of his own
reckless and redoubtable character and a louder appeal for a chance to
put it in action. It was a droll bit of bragging and merely intended, as
the chronicler informs us, to raise a laugh.

"Here I be half man an' half alligator," he shouted. "Oh, I'm one o' yer
tough kind, live forever an' then turn into a hickory post. I've just
crept out o' the ma'shes of ol' Kentuck. I'm only a yearlin', but cuss
me if I don't think I can whip anybody in this part o' the country. I'm
the chap that towed the Broadhorn up Salt River where the snags was so
thick a fish couldn't swim without rubbin' his scales off. Cock a doodle
doo! I'm the infant that refused his milk before his eyes was open an'
called for a bottle o' rum. Talk about grinnin' the bark off a tree--that
ain't nothin'. One look o' mine would raise a blister on a bull's heel.
Cock a doodle doo! (slapping his thighs). Gol darn it! Ain't there some
one that dast come up an' collar me? It would just please my vitals if
there was some man here who could split me into shoe pegs. I deserve it
if ever a man did. I'll have to go home an' have another settlement with
ol' Bill Sims. He's purty well gouged up, an' ain't but one ear, but he's
willin' to do his best. That's somethin'. It kind o' stays yer appetite,
an' I suppose that's all a man like me can expect in this world o'
sorrow."

At this point a tall, raw-boned woman in "a brindle dress" (to quote the
phrase of Samson), wearing a large gilt pin just below her collar, with
an orthographic design which spelled the name Minnie, approached the hero
and boldly boxed his ears.

"Licked at last," he shouted as he picked up his hat, dislodged by the
violence he had suffered, and retired from the scene with a good-natured
laugh.

Sarah was a bit dismayed by the behavior of these rough forerunners of
civilization.

"Don't worry," said Samson, as they were driving away on the Lake Road
next morning. "The lake and river boatmen are the roughest fellers in the
West, and they're not half as bad as they look an' talk. Their deviltry
is all on the outside. They tell me that there isn't one o' those boys
who wouldn't give his life to help a woman, an' I guess it's so."

They had the lake view and its cool breeze on their way to Silver Creek,
Dunkirk and Erie, and a rough way it was in those days.

Enough has been written of this long and wearisome journey, but the worst
of it was ahead of them--much the worst of it--in the swamp flats of Ohio
and Indiana. In one of the former a wagon wheel broke down, and that day
Sarah began to shake with ague and burn with fever. Samson built a rude
camp by the roadside, put Sarah into bed under its cover and started for
the nearest village on Colonel's back.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I shall never forget that day spent in a lonely part of the woods," the
good woman wrote to her brother. "It endeared the children to me more
than any day I can remember. They brought water from the creek, a great
quantity of which I drank, and bathed my aching head and told me stories
and cheered me in every way they could. Joe had his bear stick handy and
his plans for bears or wolves or Indians. Samson had made some nails at a
smithy in Pennsylvania. Joe managed to drive one of them through an end
of his bear stick and made, as he thought, a formidable weapon. With his
nail he hoped to penetrate the bear's eye. He had also put some bacon in
the bottom of the pack basket, knowing the liking of the basket for
bears. My faith in God's protection was perfect and in spite of my misery
the children were a great comfort. In the middle of the afternoon Samson
returned with a doctor and some tools and a stick of seasoned timber. How
good he looked when he came and knelt by my bed and kissed me! This is a
hard journey, but a woman can bear anything with such a man. The doctor
gave me Sapington's fever pills and said I would be all right in three
days, and I was.

"Late that afternoon it began to rain. Samson was singing as he worked on
his wheel. A traveler came along on horseback and saw our plight. He was
a young missionary going west. Samson began to joke with him.

"'You're a happy man for one in so much trouble,' said the stranger.

"Then I heard Samson say: 'Well, sir, I'm in a fix where happiness is
absolutely necessary. It's like grease on the wagon wheels--we couldn't
go on without it. When we need anything we make it if we can. My wife is
sick and the wagon is broke and it's raining and night is near in a
lonesome country, and it ain't a real good time for me to be down in the
mouth--is it now? We haven't broke any bones or had an earthquake or been
scalped by Indians, so there's some room for happiness.'

"'Look here, stranger--I like you,' said the man. 'If there's anything
I can do to help ye, I'll stop a while.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

He spent the night with them and helped mend the felly and set the tire.

The fever and ague passed from one to another and all were sick before
the journey ended, although Samson kept the reins in hand through his
misery. There were many breaks to mend, but Samson's ingenuity was always
equal to the task.

One day, near nightfall, they were overtaken by a tall, handsome Yankee
lad riding a pony. His pony stopped beside the wagon and looked toward
the travelers as if appealing for help. The boy was pointing toward the
horizon and muttering. Sarah saw at once that his mind was wandering in
the delirium of fever. She got out of the wagon and took his hand. The
moment she did so he began crying like a child.

"This boy is sick," she said to Samson, who came and helped him off his
horse. They camped for the night and put the boy to bed and gave him
medicine and tender care. He was too sick to travel next day. The
Traylors stayed with him and nursed the lad until he was able to go on.
He was from Niagara County, New York, and his name was Harry Needles.
His mother had died when he was ten and his father had married again. He
had not been happy in his home after that and his father had given him
a pony and a hundred dollars and sent him away to seek his own fortune.
Homesick and lonely and ill, and just going west with a sublime faith
that the West would somehow provide for him, he might even have
perished on the way if he had not fallen in with friendly people. His
story had touched the heart of Sarah and Samson. He was a big, green,
gentle-hearted country boy who had set out filled with hope and the love
of adventure. Sarah found pleasure in mothering the poor lad, and so it
happened that he became one of their little party. He was helpful and
good-natured and had sundry arts that pleased the children. The man and
the woman liked the big, honest lad.

One day he said to Samson: "I hope you won't mind if I go along with you,
sir."

"Glad to have you with us," said Samson. "We've talked it over. If you
want to, you can come along with us and our home shall be yours and I'll
do what's right by you."

They fared along through Indiana and over the wide savannas of Illinois,
and on the ninety-seventh day of their journey they drove through
rolling, grassy, flowering prairies and up a long, hard hill to the
small log cabin settlement of New Salem, Illinois, on the shore of the
Sangamon. They halted about noon in the middle of this little prairie
village, opposite a small clapboarded house. A sign hung over its door
which bore the rudely lettered words: "Rutledge's Tavern."

A long, slim, stoop-shouldered young man sat in the shade of an oak tree
that stood near a corner of the tavern, with a number of children playing
around him. He had sat leaning against the tree trunk reading a book. He
had risen as they came near and stood looking at them, with the book
under his arm. Samson says in his diary that he looked like "an untrimmed
yearling colt about sixteen hands high. He got up slow and kept rising
till his bush of black tousled hair was six feet four above the ground.
Then he put on an old straw hat without any band on it. He reminded me of
Philemon Baker's fish rod, he was that narrer. For humliness I'd match
him against the world. His hide was kind o' yaller and leathery. I could
see he was still in the gristle--a little over twenty--but his face was
marked up by worry and weather like a man's. I never saw anybody so long
between joints. Don't hardly see how he could tell when his feet got
cold."

He wore a hickory shirt without a collar or coat or jacket. One suspender
held up his coarse, linsey trousers, the legs of which fitted closely and
came only to a blue yarn zone above his heavy cowhide shoes. Samson
writes that he "fetched a sneeze and wiped his big nose with a red
handkerchief" as he stood surveying them in silence, while Dr. John
Allen, who had sat on the door-step reading a paper--a kindly faced man
of middle age with a short white beard under his chin--greeted them
cheerfully.

The withering sunlight of a day late in August fell upon the dusty
street, now almost deserted. Faces at the doors and windows of the little
houses were looking out at them. Two ragged boys and a ginger colored dog
came running toward the wagon. The latter and Sambo surveyed each other
with raised hair and began scratching the earth, straight legged, whining
meanwhile, and in a moment began to play together. A man in blue jeans
who sat on the veranda of a store opposite, leaning against its wall,
stopped whittling and shut his jack-knife.

"Where do ye hail from?" the Doctor asked.

"Vermont," said Samson.

"All the way in that wagon?"

"Yes, sir."

"I guess you're made o' the right stuff," said the Doctor. "Where ye
bound?"

"Don't know exactly. Going to take up a claim somewhere."

"There's no better country than right here. This is the Canaan of
America. We need people like you. Unhitch your team and have some dinner
and we'll talk things over after you're rested. I'm the doctor here and I
ride all over this part o' the country. I reckon I know it pretty well."

A woman in a neat calico dress came out of the door--a strong built and
rather well favored woman with blonde hair and dark eyes.

"Mrs. Rutledge, these are travelers from the East," said the Doctor.
"Give 'em some dinner, and if they can't pay for it, I can. They've come
all the way from Vermont."

"Good land! Come right in an' rest yerselves. Abe, you show the gentleman
where to put his horses an' lend him a hand."

Abe extended his long arm toward Samson and said "Howdy" as they shook
hands.

"When his big hand got hold of mine, I kind of felt his timber," Samson
writes. "I says to myself, 'There's a man it would be hard to tip over in
a rassle.'"

"What's yer name? How long ye been travelin'? My conscience! Ain't ye
wore out?" the hospitable Mrs. Rutledge was asking as she went into the
house with Sarah and the children. "You go and mix up with the little
ones and let yer mother rest while I git dinner," she said to Joe and
Betsey, and added as she took Sarah's shawl and bonnet: "You lop down an'
rest yerself while I'm flyin' around the fire."

"Come all the way from Vermont?" Abe asked as he and Samson were
unhitching.

"Yes, sir."

"By jing!" the slim giant exclaimed. "I reckon you feel like throwin' off
yer harness an' takin' a roll in the grass."




CHAPTER III

WHEREIN THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO OFFUT'S STORE AND HIS CLERK ABE, AND
THE SCHOLAR JACK KELSO AND HIS CABIN AND HIS DAUGHTER BIM, AND GETS A
FIRST LOOK AT LINCOLN.


They had a dinner of prairie thickens and roast venison, flavored with
wild grape jelly, and creamed potatoes and cookies and doughnuts and
raisin pie. It was a well cooked dinner, served on white linen, in a
clean room, and while they were eating, the sympathetic landlady stood by
the table, eager to learn of their travels and to make them feel at home.
The good food and their kindly welcome and the beauty of the rolling,
wooded prairies softened the regret which had been growing in their
hearts, and which only the children had dared to express.

"Perhaps we haven't made a mistake after all," Sarah whispered when the
dinner was over. "I like these people and the prairies are beautiful."

"It is the land of plenty at last," said Samson, as they came
out-of-doors. "It is even better than I thought."

"As Douglas Jerrold said of Australia: 'Tickle it with a hoe and it
laughs with a harvest,'" said Dr. Allen, who still sat in the shaded
dooryard, smoking his pipe. "I have an extra horse and saddle. Suppose
you leave the family with Mrs. Rutledge and ride around with me a little
this afternoon. I can show you how the land lies off to the west of us,
and to-morrow we'll look at the other side."

"Thank you--I want to look around here a little," said Samson. "What's
the name of this place?"

"New Salem. We call it a village. It has a mill, a carding machine, a
tavern, a schoolhouse, five stores, fourteen houses, two or three men of
genius, and a noisy dam. You will hear other damns, if you stay here long
enough, but they don't amount to much. It's a crude but growing place and
soon it will have all the embellishments of civilized life."

That evening many of the inhabitants of the little village came to the
tavern to see the travelers and were introduced by Dr. Allen. Most of
them had come from Kentucky, although there were two Yankee families who
had moved on from Ohio.

"These are good folks," said the Doctor. "There are others who are not so
good. I could show you some pretty rough customers at Clary's Grove, not
far from here. We have to take things as they are and do our best to make
'em better."

"Any Indians?" Sarah asked.

"You see one now and then, but they're peaceable. Most of 'em have gone
with the buffalos--farther west. We have make-believe Indians--some
reckless white boys who come whooping into the village, half crazy with
drink, once in a while. They're not so bad as they seem to be. We'll have
to do a little missionary work with them. The Indians have left their
imitators all over the West, but they only make a loud noise. That will
pass away soon. It's a noisy land. Now and then a circuit rider gets here
and preaches to us. You'll hear the Reverend Stephen Nuckles if you
settle in these parts. He can holler louder than any man in the state."

"You bet he can holler some when he gits fixed for it," said Abe, who sat
near the open door.

"He's for them that need scarin'. The man that don't need that has to be
his own preacher here and sow and reap his own morality. He can make
himself just as much of a saint as he pleases."

"If he has the raw material to work with," Abe interposed.

"The self-made saint is the only kind I believe in," said Samson.

"We haven't any Erie Canal to Heaven, with the minister towin' us along,"
said Abe. "There's some that say it's only fifteen miles to Springfield,
but the man that walks it knows better."

The tavern was the only house in New Salem with stairs in it. Stairs so
steep, as Samson writes, that "they were first cousins to the ladder."
There were four small rooms above them. Two of these were separated by
a partition of cloth hanging from the rafters. In each was a bed and
bedstead and smaller beds on the floor. In case there were a number of
adult guests the bedstead was screened with sheets hung upon strings. In
one of these rooms the travelers had a night of refreshing sleep.

After riding two days with the Doctor, Samson bought the claim of one
Isaac Gollaher to a half section of land a little more than a mile from
the western end of the village. He chose a site for his house on the edge
of an open prairie.

"Now we'll go over and see Abe," said Dr. Allen, after the deal was made.
"He's the best man with an axe and a saw in this part of the country. He
clerks for Mr. Offut. Abe Lincoln is one of the best fellows that ever
lived--a rough diamond just out of the great mine of the West, that only
needs to be cut and polished."

Denton Offut's store was a small log structure about twenty by twenty
which stood near the brow of the hill east of Rutledge's Tavern. When
they entered it Abe lay at full length on the counter, his head resting
on a bolt of blue denim as he studied a book in his hand. He wore the
same shirt and one suspender and linsey trousers which he had worn in the
dooryard of the tavern, but his feet were covered only by his blue yarn
socks.

It was a general store full of exotic flavors, chiefly those of tea,
coffee, whisky, tobacco, muscovado sugar and molasses. There was a
counter on each side. Bolts of cloth, mostly calico, were piled on the
far end of the right counter as one entered and the near end held a show
case containing a display of cutlery, pewter spoons, jewelry and fishing
tackle. There were double windows on either side of the rough board door
with its wooden latch. The left counter held a case filled with threads,
buttons, combs, colored ribbons, and belts and jew's-harps. A balance
stood in the middle of this counter. A chest of tea, a big brown jug,
a box of candles, a keg and a large wooden pail occupied its farther end.
The shelving on its side walls was filled by straw hats, plug tobacco,
bolts of cloth, pills and patent medicines and paste-board boxes
containing shirts, handkerchiefs and underwear. A suit of blue jeans,
scythes and snaths, hoes, wooden hand rakes and a brass warming-pan hung
from the rafters. At the rear end of the store was a large fireplace.
There were two chairs near the fireplace, both of which were occupied by
a man who sat in one while his feet lay on the other. He was sleeping
peacefully, his chin resting on his breast. He wore a calico shirt with a
fanciful design of morning-glories on it printed in appropriate colors, a
collar of the same material and a red necktie.

Abe laid aside his book and rose to a sitting posture.

"Pardon me--you see the firm is busy," said Abe. "You know Eb Zane used
to say that he was never so busy in his life as when he lay on his back
with a broken leg. He said he had to work twenty-four hours a day doin'
nothin' an' could never git an hour off. But a broken leg is not so bad
as a lame intellect. That lays you out with the fever an' ague of
ignorance. Jack Kelso recommended Kirkham's pills and poultices of
poetry. I'm trying both and slowly getting the better of it. I've learned
three conjugations, between customers, this afternoon."

The man sleeping in the chair began snoring and groaning.

"Don't blame Bill," Abe went on. "Any man would have the nightmare in a
shirt like that. He went to a dance at Clary's Grove last night and they
shut him up in a barrel with a small dog and rolled 'em down hill in it.
I reckon that's how he learnt how to growl."

In the laughter that followed the sleeper awoke.

"You see there's quite an undercurrent beneath the placid surface of our
enterprise," Abe added.

The sleeper whose name was William Berry rose and stretched himself and
was introduced to the newcomer. He was a short, genial man, of some
thirty years, with blond, curly hair and mustache. On account of his
shortness and high color he was often referred to as the Billberry
shortcake. His fat cheeks had a color as definite as that of the blossoms
on his shirt, now rather soiled. His prominent nose shared their glow of
ruddy opulence. His gray eyes wore a look of apology. He walked rather
stiffly as if his legs were rheumatic.

"Mr. Traylor, this is Mr. William Berry," said Dr. Allen. "In this
beautiful shirt he resembles a bit of vine-clad sculpture from an Italian
garden, but is real flesh and blood and a good fellow."

"I don't understand your high-toned talk," said Berry. "This shirt suits
me to a dot."

"It is the pride of New Salem," said the Doctor. "Mr. Traylor has just
acquired an interest in all our institutions. He has bought the Gollaher
tract and is going to build a house and some fences. Abe, couldn't you
help get the timber out in a hurry so we can have a raising within a
week? You know the arts of the axe better than any of us."

Abe looked at Samson.

"I reckon he and I would make a good team with the axe," he said. "He
looks as if he could push a house down with one hand and build it up with
the other. You can bet I'll be glad to help in any way I can."

"We'll all turn in and help. I should think Bill or Jack Kelso could look
after the store for a few days," said the Doctor. "I promised to take Mr.
Traylor over to Jack Kelso's to-night. Couldn't you come along?"

"Good! We'll have a story-tellin' and get Jack to unlimber his guns,"
said Abe.

It was a cool evening with a promise of frost in the air. Jack Kelso's
cabin, one of two which stood close together at the western end of the
village, was lighted by the cheery blaze of dry logs in its fireplace.
There were guns on a rack over the fireplace under a buck's head; a
powder horn hanging near them on its string looped over a nail. There
were wolf and deer and bear pelts on the floor. The skins of foxes,
raccoons and wildcats adorned the log walls. Jack Kelso was a blond,
smooth faced, good-looking, merry-hearted Scot, about forty years old,
of a rather slight build, some five feet, eight inches tall. That is all
that any one knew of him save that he spent most of his time hunting and
fishing and seemed to have all the best things, which great men had said
or written, on the tip of his tongue. He was neatly dressed in a blue
flannel coat and shirt, top boots and riding breeches.

"Welcome! and here's the best seat at the fireside," he said to Samson.

Then, as he filled his pipe, he quoted the lines from Cymbeline:

  "'Think us no churls nor measure our good minds
   By this rude place we live in.'

"My wife and daughter are away for a visit and for two days I've had the
cabin to myself. Look, ye worshipers of fire, and see how fine it is now!
The homely cabin is a place of beauty. Everything has the color of the
rose, coming and going in the flickering shadows. What a heaven it is
when the flames are leaping! Here is Hogarth's line of beauty; nothing
perpendicular or horizontal."

He took Abe's hand and went on: "Here, ye lovers of romance, is one of
the story-tellers of Ispahan who has in him the wisdom of the wandering
tribes. He can tell you a tale that will draw children from their play
and old men from the chimney corner. My boy, take a chair next to Mr.
Traylor."

He took the hand of the Doctor and added: "Here, too, is a man whose wit
is more famous than his pills--one produces the shakes and the other
cures them. Doctor, you and I will take the end seats."

"My pills can be relied upon but my wit is like my dog, away from home
most of the time," said the Doctor.

"Gathering the bones with which you often astonish us," said Kelso. "How
are the lungs, Doctor?"

"They're all right. These long rides in the open are making a new man of
me. Another year in the city would have used me up."

"Mr. Traylor, you stand up as proud and firm as a big pine," Kelso
remarked. "I believe you're a Yankee."

"So do I," said Samson. "If you took all the Yankee out o' me I'd have an
empty skin."

Then Abe began to show the stranger his peculiar art in these words:

"Stephen Nuckles used to say: 'God's grace embraces the isles o' the sea
an' the uttermost parts o' the earth. It takes in the Esquimaux an' the
Hottentots. Some go so fur as to say that it takes in the Yankees but I
don't go so fur.'"

Samson joined in the good-natured laughter that followed.

"If you deal with some Yankees you take your life in your hands," he
said. "They can serve God or Mammon and I guess they have given the Devil
some of his best ideas. He seems to be getting a lot of Yankee notions
lately."

"There was a powerful prejudice in Kentucky against the Yankees," Abe
went on. "Down there they used to tell about a Yankee who sold his hogs
and was driving them to town. On the way he decided that he had sold them
too cheap. He left them with his drover in the road and went on to town
and told the buyer that he would need help to bring 'em in.

"'How's that?' the buyer asked.

"'Why they git away an' go to runnin' through the woods an' fields an' we
can't keep up with 'em.'

"'I don't think I want 'em,' says the buyer. 'A speedy hog hasn't much
pork to carry. I'll give ye twenty bits to let me off.'"

"I guess that Yankee had one more hog than he'd counted," said Samson.

"It reminds me of a man in Pope County who raised the biggest hog in
Illinois," Abe went on. "It was a famous animal and people from far and
near came to see him. One day a man came an' asked to see the hog.

"'We're chargin' two bits for the privilege now,' said the owner.

"The man paid the money and got into his wagon.

"'Don't you want to see him?' the farmer asked.

"'No,' said the stranger. 'I've seen the biggest hog in Illinois an'
I don't care to look at a smaller one.'"

"Whatever prejudice you may find here will soon vanish," said Kelso,
turning to the newcomer. "I have great respect for the sturdy sons of New
England. I believe it was Theodore Parker who said that the pine was the
symbol of their character. He was right. Its roots are deep in the soil;
it towers above the forest; it has the strength of tall masts and the
substance of the builder in its body, music in its waving branches and
turpentine in its veins. I thought of this when I saw Webster and heard
him speak at Plymouth."

"What kind of a looking man is he?" Abe asked.

"A big erect, splendid figure of a man. He walked like a ram at the head
of his flock. As he began speaking I thought of that flash of Homer's in
the _Odyssey_:

"'When his great voice went forth out of his breast and his words fell
like the winter snows--not then would any mortal contend with Ulysses.'"

Abe who since his story had sat with a sad face looking into the fire now
leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and shook his head with interest
while his gray eyes took on a look of animation. The diary speaks often
of the "veil of sadness" on his face.

"He is a very great man," Abe exclaimed.

"Have you learned that last noble flight of his in the reply to Hayne as
you promised?" Kelso asked.

"I have," said Abe, "and the other day when I was tramping back from
Bowlin Green's I came across a drove of cattle and stopped and gave it to
them. They all let go of the grass and stood looking. By an' by the bull
thought he'd stood it as long as he could an' bellered back at me."

"Good! Now stand up and let us see how you imitate the great chief of the
Whig clan," said Kelso.

The lank and awkward youth rose and began to speak the lines in a high
pitched voice that trembled with excitement. It lowered and steadied and
rang out like noble music on a well played trumpet as the channel of his
spirit filled with the mighty current of the orator's passion. Then,
indeed, the words fell from his lips "like the winter snows."

"They shook our hearts as the wind shakes the branches of a tree," Samson
writes in his diary. "The lean, bony body of the boy was transfigured and
as I looked at his face in the firelight I thought it was handsome.

"Not a word was spoken for a minute after he sat down. I had got my first
look at Lincoln. I had seen his soul. I think it was then I began to
realize that a man was being made among us 'more precious than fine gold;
even a man more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir.'"

The Doctor gazed in silence at the boy. Kelso sat with both hands in his
pockets and his chin upon his breast looking solemnly into the fire.

"Thank you, Abe," he said in a low voice. "Something unusual has happened
and I'm just a little scared."

"Why?" Abe asked.

"For fear somebody will spoil it with another hog story. I'm a little
afraid of anything I can say. I would venture this, that the man Webster
is a prophet. In his Plymouth address he hears receding into never
returning distance the clank of chains and all the horrid din of slavery.
It will come true."

"Do you think so?" Abe asked.

"Surely--there are so many of us who hate it. These Yankees hate it and
they and their children are scattering all over the midlands. Their
spirit will guide the West. The love of Liberty is the salt of their
blood and the marrow of their bones. Liberty means freedom for all. Wait
until these babies, coming out here by the wagon load, have grown to
manhood. Slavery will have to reckon with them."

"I hate it too," said Abe. "Down the Mississippi I have seen men and
women sold like oxen. If I live I'm going to hit that thing on the head
some day."

"Do you still want to be a lawyer?" Kelso asked.

"Yes, but sometimes I think I'd make a better blacksmith," said Abe.

"I believe you'd do better with the hammer of argument."

"If I had the education likely I would. I'm trying to make up my mind
what's best for me."

"No, you're trying to decide what is best for your friends and your
country and for the reign of law and justice and liberty."

"But I think every man acts from selfish motives," Abe insisted.

Dr. Allen demurred as follows:

"The other night you happened to remember that you had overcharged Mrs.
Peters for a jug of molasses and after you had closed the store you
walked three miles to return the money which belonged to her. Why did you
do it?"

"For a selfish motive," said Abe. "I believe honesty is the best policy."

"Then you took that long walk just to advertise your honesty--to induce
people to call you 'Honest Abe' as they have begun to do?"

"I wouldn't want to put it that way," said Abe.

"But that's the only way out," the Doctor insisted, "and we knowing ones
would have to call you 'Sordid Abe.'"

"There's a hidden Abe and you haven't got acquainted with him yet," Kelso
interposed. "We have all caught a glimpse of him to-night. He's the Abe
that loves honor and justice and humanity and their great temple of
freedom that is growing up here in the new world. He loves them better
than fame or fortune or life itself. I think it must have been that Abe
whose voice sounded like a trumpet just now and who sent you off to Mrs.
Peters with the money. You haven't the chance to know him that we have.
Some day you two will get acquainted."

"I don't know how to plead to that indictment," Abe answered. "It looks
so serious I shall have to take counsel."

At this moment there was a loud rap on the door. Mr. Kelso opened it and
said: "Hello, Eli! Come in."

A hairy faced, bow legged man, bent under a great pack, partly covered
with bed ticking, stood in the doorway.

"Hello, Mr. Kelso," the bearded man answered. "The poor vandering Jew has
gome back ag'in--hey? I tink I haf to take de hump off my back before I
gits in."

Staggering beneath his load he let it down to the ground.

"Bring in your Trojan horse and mind you do not let out its four and
twenty warriors until morning. I'll have some bread and milk for you in a
minute. Gentlemen, this is my friend Eli--a wandering pioneer of trade."

"I haf a vonderful line o' goods--vonderful! vonderful!" said Eli,
gesturing with both hands. "Silk an' satin! De flowers o' de prairie, de
birds o' de air could not show you colors like dem. You vill fall in
love. If I do not let you have dem you vill break your hearts. An' I have
here one instrument dot make all kinds o' music."

"First supper--then open your Trojan horse," said Kelso.

"First I must show my goods," Eli insisted, "ant I'll bet you take dem
all--everyt'ing vat I have in dot pack an' you pay my price an' you t'ank
me say 'Eli, vat you have to drink?'"

"I'll bet you four bits I don't," said Kelso.

"You are my frient; I vould not take your money like dot so easy. No! It
vould not be right. These are Scotch goods, gentlemen--so rare an'
beautiful--not'ing like dem in de world."

He began to undo his pack while the little company stood around him.

"Gentlemen, you can see but you can not buy. Only my frient can have dem
goods," he went on glibly as he removed the cover of the pack.

Suddenly there was a lively stir in it. To the amazement of all a
beautiful girl threw aside the ticking and leaped out of the large wicker
basket it had covered. With a merry laugh she threw her arms around Jack
Kelso's neck and kissed him.

The men clapped their hands in noisy merriment.

"That's like Bim, isn't it?" said the Doctor.

"Exactly!" Abe exclaimed.

"I stop at David Barney's an' dere she took de goods out o' my pack an'
fix up dis job lot fer you," said Eli with a laugh.

"A real surprise party!" the girl exclaimed.

She was a small sized girl, nearing sixteen, with red cheeks and hazel
eyes and blonde hair that fell in curls upon her shoulders.

"Mr. Traylor, this is my daughter Bim," said Kelso. "She is skilled in
the art of producing astonishment."

"She must have heard of that handsome boy at the tavern and got in a
hurry to come home," said the Doctor.

"Ann Rutledge says that he is a right purty boy," the girl laughed as she
brushed her curls aside.

She turned to Samson Traylor and asked wistfully, "Do you suppose he
would play with me?"




CHAPTER IV

WHICH PRESENTS OTHER LOG CABIN FOLK AND THE FIRST STEPS IN THE MAKING OF
A NEW HOME AND CERTAIN CAPACITIES AND INCAPACITIES OF ABE.


Next morning at daylight two parties went out in the woods to cut timber
for the home of the newcomers. In one party were Harry Needles carrying
two axes and a well filled luncheon pail; Samson with a saw in his hand
and the boy Joe on his back; Abe with saw and axe and a small jug of root
beer and a book tied in a big red handkerchief and slung around his neck.
When they reached the woods Abe cut a pole for the small boy and carried
him on his shoulder to the creek and said:

"Now you sit down here and keep order in this little frog city. If you
hear a frog say anything improper you fetch him a whack. Don't allow any
nonsense. We'll make you Mayor of Frog City."

The men fell to with axes and saws while Harry limbed the logs and looked
after the Mayor. Their huge muscles flung the sharp axes into the timber
and gnawed through it with the saw. Many big trees fell before noon time
when they stopped for luncheon. While they were eating Abe said:

"I reckon we better saw out a few boards this afternoon. Need 'em for the
doors. We'll tote a couple of logs up on the side o' that knoll, put 'em
on skids an' whip 'em up into boards with the saw."

Samson took hold of the middle of one of the logs and raised it from the
ground.

"I guess we can carry 'em," he said.

"Can ye shoulder it?" Abe asked.

"Easy," said Samson as he raised an end of the log, stepped beneath it
and, resting its weight on his back, soon got his shoulder near its
center and swung it clear of the ground and walked with it to the
knollside where he let it fall with a resounding thump that shook the
ground. Abe stopped eating and watched every move in this remarkable
performance. The ease with which the big Vermonter had so defied the
law of gravitation with that unwieldly stick amazed him.

"That thing'll weigh from seven to eight hundred pounds," said he. "I
reckon you're the stoutest man in this part o' the state an' I'm quite a
man myself. I've lifted a barrel o' whisky and put my mouth to the bung
hole. I never drink it."

"Say," he added as he sat down and began eating a doughnut. "If you ever
hit anybody take a sledge hammer or a crowbar. It wouldn't be decent to
use your fist."

"Don't talk when you've got food in your mouth," said Joe who seemed to
have acquired a sense of responsibility for the manners of Abe.

"I reckon you're right," Abe laughed. "A man's ideas ought not to be
mingled with cheese and doughnuts."

"Once in a while I like to try myself in a lift," said Samson. "It feels
good. I don't do it to show off. I know there's a good many men stouter
than I be. I guess you're one of 'em."

"No, I'm too stretched out--my neck is too far from the ground," Abe
answered. "I'm like a crowbar. If I can get my big toe or my fingers
under anything I can pry some."

After luncheon he took off his shoes and socks.

"When I'm working hard I always try to give my feet a rest and my brain
a little work at noon time," he remarked. "My brain is so far behind the
procession I have to keep putting the gad on it. Give me twenty minutes
of Kirkham and I'll be with you again."

He lay down on his back under a tree with his book in hand and his feet
resting on the tree trunk well above him. Soon he was up and at work
again.

They hewed a flat surface on opposite sides of the log which Samson had
carried and peeled it and raised its lower end on a cross timber. Then
they marked it with a chalk line and sliced it into inch boards with a
whip saw, Abe standing on top of the log and Samson beneath it. Suddenly
the saw stopped. A clear, beautiful voice flung the music of _Sweet
Nightingale_ into the timbered hollow. It halted the workers and set the
woodland ringing. The men stood silent like those hearing a benediction.
The singing ceased. Still they listened for half a moment. It was as if a
spirit had passed and touched them.

"It's Bim--the little vixen!" said Abe tenderly. "She's hiding here in
the woods somewheres."

Abe straightened up and peered through the bushes. The singing ceased.

"I can see yer curls. Come out from behind that tree--you piece o' Scotch
goods!" Abe shouted.

Only silence followed his demand.

"Come on," Abe persisted. "There's a good-looking boy here and I want to
introduce you."

"Ask him to see if he can find me," said the voice of the girl from a
distance.

Abe beckoned to Harry and pointed to the tree behind which he had seen
her hiding. Harry stealthily approached it only to find that she had
gone. He looked about for a moment but could not see her. Soon they heard
a little call, suggesting elfland trumpets, in a distant part of the
wood. It was repeated three or four times; each time fainter and farther.
They saw and heard no more of her that day.

"She's an odd child and as pretty as a spotted fawn, and about as wild,"
said Abe. "She's a kind of a first cousin to the bobolink."

When they were getting ready to go home that afternoon Joe got into a
great hurry to see his mother. It seemed to him that ages had elapsed
since he had seen her--a conviction which led to noisy tears.

Abe knelt before him and comforted the boy. Then he wrapped him in his
jacket and swung him in the air and started for home with Joe astride his
neck.

Samson says in his diary: "His tender play with the little lad gave me
another look at the man Lincoln."

"Some one proposed once that we should call that stream the Minnehaha,"
said Abe as he walked along. "After this Joe and I are going to call it
the Minneboohoo."

The women of the little village had met at a quilting party at ten
o'clock with Mrs. Martin Waddell. There Sarah had had a seat at the frame
and heard all the gossip of the countryside. The nimble fingered Ann
Rutledge--a daughter of the tavern folk--had sat beside her. Ann was a
slender, good-looking girl of seventeen with blue eyes and a rich crown
of auburn hair and a fair skin well browned by the sunlight. She was the
most dexterous needle worker in New Salem. It was Mrs. Peter Lukins, a
very lean, red haired woman with only one eye which missed no matrimonial
prospect--who put the ball in play so to speak.

"Ann, if Honest Abe gits you, you'll have to spend the first three months
makin' a pair o' breeches for him. It'll be a mile o' sewin'."

"I reckon she'd have to spend the rest o' her life keepin' the buttons on
'em," said Mrs. John Cameron.

"Abe doesn't want me and I don't want Abe so I reckon some other girl
will have to make his breeches," said Ann.

"My lord! but he's humbly," said Mrs. Alexander Ferguson.

"Han'some is that han'some does," Mrs. Martin Waddell remarked. "I don't
know anybody that does han'somer."

"Han'some is that han'some looks I say," Mrs. Lukins continued with a
dreamy look in her eye.

"I like a man that'll bear inspection--up an' a comin' an' neat an' trim
as a buck deer," Mrs. Ferguson confessed.

"An' the first ye know he's up an' a goin'," said Mrs. Samuel Hill. "An
then all ye have to look at is a family o' children an' the empty bread
box."

"Wait until Abe has shed his coat an' is filled out a little. He'll be a
good-lookin' man an' I wouldn't wonder," Mrs. Waddell maintained.

"If Abe lives he'll be a great man, I think," said Mrs. Dr. Allen. "I
forgot how he looked when I heard him talking the other night at the
debate in the schoolhouse about the flogging of sailors with the cat o'
nine tails. He has a wonderful gift. If I were Ann I should be proud of
his friendship and proud to go with him to the parties."

"I am," said Ann meekly, with her eyes upon her work. "I love to hear him
talk, too."

"Oh, land o' mercy! He's good company if you only use your ears," Mrs.
Ferguson remarked. "Mis' Traylor, where did you git your man?"

"At Vergennes. We were born in the same neighborhood and grew up
together," said Sarah.

"Now there's the kind of a man! Stout as a buffalo an' as to looks I'd
call him, as ye might say, real copasetic." Mrs. Lukins expressed this
opinion solemnly and with a slight cough. Its last word stood for nothing
more than an indefinite depth of meaning. She added by way of drawing the
curtain of history: "I'll bet _he_ didn't dilly dally long when he made
up his mind. I reckon he were plum owdacious."

"What a pretty pattern this is!" said Sarah with a sudden shift of front.

Mrs. Lukins was not to be driven from the Elysian fields so easily and
forthwith she told the story of her own courtship.

A bountiful dinner of stewed venison and chicken pie and tea and frosted
cake was served, all hands turning in to help with the table and the
cleaning up. While they were eating Sarah told of her long journey and
their trials with fever and ague.

"It's the worst part of going west but it really isn't very dangerous,"
said Mrs. Dr. Allen.

"Nine scoops o' water in the holler o' the hand from a good spring for
three mornin's before sunrise an' strong coffee with lemon juice will
break the ager every time," said Mrs. Lukins. "My gran' mammy used to say
it were better than all the doctors an' I've tried it an' know what it'll
do."

"I suppose if you got ten scoops it would be no good," said Sarah with a
laugh in which Mrs. Allen and some of the others joined.

Mrs. Lukins looked offended. "When I'm takin' medicine I always foller
directions," said she.

So the day passed with them and was interrupted by the noisy entrance of
Joe, soon after candlelight, who climbed on the back of his mother's
chair and kissed her and in breathless eagerness began to relate the
history of his own day.

That ended the quilting party and Sarah and Mrs. Rutledge and Ann joined
Samson and Abe and Harry Needles who were waiting outside and walked to
the tavern with them.

John McNeil, whom the Traylors had met on the road near Niagara Falls and
who had shared their camp with them, arrived on the stage that evening.
He was dressed in a new butternut suit and clean linen and looked very
handsome. Samson writes that he resembled the pictures of Robert Emmet.
With fine, dark eyes, a smooth skin, well moulded features and black hair
neatly brushed on a shapely head he was not at all like the rugged Abe.
In a low tone and very modestly, with a slight brogue on his tongue he
told of his adventures on the long, shore road to Michigan. Ann sat
listening and looking into his face as he talked. Abe came in, soon after
eight o'clock, and was introduced to the stranger. All noted the contrast
between the two young men as they greeted each other. Abe sat down for
a few minutes and looked sadly into the fire but said nothing. He rose
presently, excused himself and went away.

Soon Samson followed him. Over at Offut's store he did not find Abe,
but Bill Berry was drawing liquor from the spigot of a barrel set on
blocks in a shed connected with the rear end of the store and serving
it to a number of hilarious young Irishmen. His shirt was soiled. Its
morning-glories had grown dim in a kind of dusty twilight. The young men
asked Samson to join them.

"No, thank you. I never touch it," he said.

"We'll come over here an' learn ye how to enjoy yerself some day," one of
them said.

"I'm pretty well posted on that subject now," Samson answered.

It is likely that they would have begun his schooling at once but when
they came out into the store and saw the big Vermonter standing in the
candlelight their laughter ceased for a moment. Bill was among them with
a well filled bottle in his hand.

He and the others got into a wagon which had been waiting at the door and
drove away with a wild Indian whoop from the lips of one of the young
men.

Samson sat down in the candlelight and Abe in a moment arrived.

"I'm getting awful sick o' this business," said Abe.

"I kind o' guess you don't like the whisky part of it," Samson remarked,
as he felt a piece of cloth.

"I hate it," Abe went on. "It don't seem respectable any longer."

"Back in Vermont we don't like the whisky business."

"You're right, it breeds deviltry and disorder. In my youth I was
surrounded by whisky. Everybody drank it. A bottle or a jug of liquor was
thought to be as legitimate a piece of merchandise as a pound of tea or a
yard of calico. That's the way I've always thought of it. But lately I've
begun to get the Yankee notion about whisky. When it gets into bad
company it can raise the devil."

Soon after nine o'clock Abe drew a mattress filled with corn husks from
under the counter, cleared away the bolts of cloth and laid it where they
had been and covered it with a blanket.

"This is my bed," said he. "I'll be up at five in the morning. Then I'll
be making tea here by the fireplace to wash down some jerked meat and a
hunk o' bread. At six or a little after I'll be ready to go with you
again. Jack Kelso is going to look after the store to-morrow."

He began to laugh.

"Ye know when I went out of the tavern that little vixen stood peekin'
into the window--Bim, Jack's girl," said Abe. "I asked her why she didn't
go in and she said she was scared. 'Who you 'fraid of?' I asked. 'Oh, I
reckon that boy,' says she. And honestly her hand trembled when she took
hold of my arm and walked to her' father's house with me."

Abe snickered as he spread another blanket. "What a cut-up she is! Say,
we'll have some fun watching them two I reckon," he said.

The logs were ready two days after the cutting began. Martin Waddell and
Samuel Hill sent teams to haul them. John Cameron and Peter Lukins had
brought the window sash and some clapboards from Beardstown in a small
flat boat. Then came the day of the raising--a clear, warm day early in
September. All the men from the village and the near farms gathered to
help make a home for the newcomers. Samson and Jack Kelso went out for a
hunt after the cutting and brought in a fat buck and many grouse for the
bee dinner, to which every woman of the neighborhood made a contribution
of cake or pie or cookies or doughnuts.

"What will be my part?" Samson had inquired of Kelso.

"Nothing but a jug of whisky and a kind word and a house warming," Kelso
had answered.

They notched and bored the logs and made pins to bind them and cut those
that were to go around the fireplace and window spaces. Strong, willing
and well trained hands hewed and fitted the logs together. Alexander
Ferguson lined the fireplace with a curious mortar made of clay in which
he mixed grass for a binder. This mortar he rolled into layers called
"cats," each eight inches long and three inches thick. Then he laid them
against the logs and held them in place with a woven network of sticks.
The first fire--a slow one--baked the clay into a rigid stone-like sheath
inside the logs and presently the sticks were burned away. The women had
cooked the meats by an open fire and spread the dinner on a table of
rough boards resting on poles set in crotches. At noon one of them
sounded a conch shell. Then with shouts of joy the men hurried to the
fireside and for a moment there was a great spluttering over the wash
basins. Before they ate every man except Abe and Samson "took a pull at
the jug--long or short"--to quote a phrase of the time.

It was a cheerful company that sat down upon the grass around the table
with loaded plates. Their food had its extra seasoning of merry jests and
loud laughter. Sarah was a little shocked at the forthright directness of
their eating, no knives or forks or napkins being needed in that process.
Having eaten, washed and packed away their dishes the women went home at
two. Before they had gone Samson's ears caught a thunder of horses' feet
in the distance. Looking in its direction he saw a cloud of dust in the
road and a band of horsemen riding toward them at full speed. Abe came to
him and said:

"I see the boys from Clary's Grove are coming. If they get mean let me
deal with 'em. It's my responsibility. I wouldn't wonder if they had some
of Offut's whisky with them."

The boys arrived in a cloud of dust and a chorus of Indian whoops and
dismounted and hobbled their horses. They came toward the workers, led
by burly Jack Armstrong, a stalwart, hard-faced blacksmith of about
twenty-two with broad, heavy shoulders, whose name has gone into history.
They had been drinking some but no one of them was in the least degree
off his balance. They scuffled around the jug for a moment in perfect
good nature and then Abe and Mrs. Waddell provided them with the best
remnants of the dinner. They were rather noisy. Soon they went up on the
roof to help with the rafters and the clapboarding. They worked well a
few minutes and suddenly they came scrambling down for another pull
at the jug. They were out for a spree and Abe knew it and knew further
that they had reached the limit of discretion.

"Boys, there are ladies here and we've got to be careful," he said. "Did
I ever tell you what Uncle Jerry Holman said of his bull calf? He said
the calf was such a _suckcess_ that he didn't leave any milk for the
family and that while the calf was growin' fat the children was growin'
poor. In my opinion you're about fat enough for the present. Le's stick
to the job till four o'clock. Then we'll knock off for refreshments."

The young revelers gathered in a group and began to whisper together.
Samson writes that it became evident then they were going to make trouble
and says:

       *       *       *       *       *

"We had left the children at Rutledge's in the care of Ann. I went to
Sarah and told her she had better go on and see if they were all right.

"'Don't you get in any fight,' she said, which shows that the women knew
what was in the air.

"Sarah led the way and the others followed her."

       *       *       *       *       *

Those big, brawny fellows from the grove when they got merry were looking
always for a chance to get mad at some man and turn him into a plaything.
A victim had been a necessary part of their sprees. Many a poor fellow
had been fastened in a barrel and rolled down hill or nearly drowned in a
ducking for their amusement. A chance had come to get mad and they were
going to make the most of it. They began to growl with resentment. Some
were wigging their leader Jack Armstrong to fight Abe. One of them ran to
his horse and brought a bottle from his saddle-bag. It began passing from
mouth to mouth. Jack Armstrong got the bottle before it was half emptied,
drained it and flung it high in the air. Another called him a hog and
grappled him around the waist and there was a desperate struggle which
ended quickly. Armstrong got a hold on the neck of his assailant and
choked him until he let go. This was not enough for the sturdy bully of
Clary's Grove. He seized his follower and flung him so roughly on the
ground that the latter lay for a moment stunned. Armstrong had got his
blood warm and was now ready for action. With a wild whoop he threw off
his coats, unbuttoned his right shirt-sleeve and rolled it to the
shoulder and declared in a loud voice, as he swung his arm in the air,
that he could "out jump, out hop, out run, throw down, drag out an' lick
any man in New Salem."

In a letter to his father Samson writes:

       *       *       *       *       *

"Abe was working at my elbow. I saw him drop his hammer and get up and
make for the ladder. I knew something was going to happen and I followed
him. In a minute every one was off the roof and out of the building. I
guess they knew what was coming. The big lad stood there swinging his arm
and yelling like an Injun. It was a big arm and muscled and corded up
some but I guess if I'd shoved the calico off mine and held it up he'd a
pulled down his sleeve. I suppose the feller's arm had a kind of a mule's
kick in it, but, good gracious! If he'd a seen as many arms as you an' I
have that have growed up on a hickory helve he'd a known that his was
nothing to brag of. I didn't know just how good a man Abe was and I was
kind o' scairt for a minute. I never found it so hard work to do nothin'
as I did then. Honest my hands kind o' ached. I wanted to go an' cuff
that feller's ears an' grab hold o' him an' toss him over the ridge pole.
Abe went right up to him an' said:

"'Jack, you ain't half so bad or half so cordy as ye think ye are. You
say you can throw down any man here. I reckon I'll have to show ye that
you're mistaken. I'll rassle with ye. We're friends an' we won't talk
about lickin' each other. Le's have a friendly rassle.'

"In a second the two men were locked together. Armstrong had lunged at
Abe with a yell. There was no friendship in the way he took hold. He was
going to do all the damage he could in any way he could. He tried to butt
with his head and ram his knee into Abe's stomach as soon as they came
together. Half drunk Jack is a man who would bite your ear off. It was no
rassle; it was a fight. Abe moved like lightning. He acted awful limber
an' well greased. In a second he had got hold of the feller's neck with
his big right hand and hooked his left into the cloth on his hip. In that
way he held him off and shook him as you've seen our dog shake a
woodchuck. Abe's blood was hot. If the whole crowd had piled on him I
guess he would have come out all right, for when he's roused there's
something in Abe more than bones and muscles. I suppose it's what I feel
when he speaks a piece. It's a kind of lightning. I guess it's what our
minister used to call the power of the spirit. Abe said to me afterwards
that he felt as if he was fighting for the peace and honor of New Salem.

"A friend of the bully jumped in and tried to trip Abe. Harry Needles
stood beside me. Before I could move he dashed forward and hit that
feller in the middle of his forehead and knocked him flat. Harry had
hit Bap McNoll the cock fighter. I got up next to the kettle then and
took the scum off it. Fetched one of them devils a slap with the side of
my hand that took the skin off his face and rolled him over and over.
When I looked again Armstrong was going limp. His mouth was open and his
tongue out. With one hand fastened to his right leg and the other on the
nape of his neck Abe lifted him at arm's length and gave him a toss in
the air. Armstrong fell about ten feet from where Abe stood and lay there
for a minute. The fight was all out of him and he was kind of dazed and
sick. Abe stood up like a giant and his face looked awful solemn.

"'Boys, if there's any more o' you that want trouble you can have some
off the same piece,' he said.

"They hung their heads and not one of them made a move or said a word.
Abe went to Armstrong and helped him up.

"'Jack, I'm sorry that I had to hurt you.' be said. 'You get on to your
horse and go home.'

"'Abe, you're a better man than me,' said the bully, as he offer'd his
hand to Abe. 'I'll do anything you say.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

So the Clary's Grove gang was conquered. They were to make more trouble
but not again were they to imperil the foundations of law and order in
the little community of New Salem. As they were starting away Bap McNoll
turned to Harry Needles and shouted: "I'll git even with you yet--you
slab-sided son of a dog."

That is not exactly what he said but it is near enough.




CHAPTER V

IN WHICH THE CHARACTER OF BIM KELSO FLASHES OUT IN A STRANGE ADVENTURE
THAT BEGINS THE WEAVING OF A LONG THREAD OF ROMANCE.


The shell of the cabin was finished that day. Its puncheon floor was in
place but its upper floor was to be laid when the boards were ready. Its
two doors were yet to be made and hung, its five windows to be fitted and
made fast, its walls to be chinked with clay mortar. Samson and Harry
stayed that evening after the rest were gone, smoothing the puncheon
floor. They made a few nails at the forge after supper and went over to
Abe's store about nine. Two of the Clary's Grove Gang who had tarried in
the village sat in the gloom of its little veranda apparently asleep. Dr.
Allen, Jack Kelso, Alexander Ferguson and Martin Waddell were sitting by
its fireside while Abe sat on the counter with his legs hanging off.

"He's a tough oak stick of a man," Kelso was saying.

"Here he is now," said Dr. Allen. "That lad you cuffed had to stop at my
office for repairs."

"I told you once to use a crowbar if you wanted to hit anybody, but never
to use your hands," said Abe.

"Well there wasn't any time to lose and there was no crowbar handy," said
Samson.

"That reminds me of a general who made the boys of his regiment promise
to let him do all the swearin'," Abe began. "One day a sergeant got into
trouble with a mule team. It was raining hard and the off mule balked.
Wouldn't draw a pound. The sergeant got wet to the skin and swore a song
of fourteen verses that was heard by half the regiment. The general
called him up for discipline.

"'Young man, I thought it was understood that I was to do all the
swearin',' he said.

"'So it was,' said the sergeant, 'but that swearin' had to be done right
away. You couldn't 'a' got there in time to do it if I'd 'a' sent for
ye.'"

"I'm sorry we had to have trouble," Samson remarked, after the outburst
of appreciation that followed Abe's story. "It's the only spot on the
day. I'll never forget the kindness of the people of New Salem."

"The raising bee is a most significant thing," said Kelso. "Democracy
tends to universal friendship--each works for the crowd and the crowd
for each and there are no favorites. Every community is like the thousand
friends of Thebes. Most of its units stand together for the common
good--for justice, law and honor. The schools are spinning strands of
democracy out of all this European wool. Railroads are to pick them up
and weave them into one great fabric. By and by we shall see the ten
million friends of America standing together as did the thousand friends
of Thebes."

"It's a great thought," said Abe.

"No man can estimate the size of that mighty phalanx of friendship all
trained in one school," Kelso went on. "Two years ago the _Encyclopedia
Britannica_ figured that the population of the United States in 1905
would be 168,000,000 people, and in 1966, 672,000,000. Wealth, power,
science, literature, all follow in the train of light and numbers. The
causes which moved the sceptre of civilization from the Euphrates to
Western Europe will carry it from the latter to the New World."

"They say that electricity and the development of the steam engine is
going to make all men think alike," said Abe. "If that's so Democracy and
Liberty will spread over the earth."

"The seed of Universal Brotherhood is falling far and wide and you can
not kill it," Kelso continued. "Last year Mazzini said: 'There is only
one sun in heaven for the whole earth, only one law for all who people
it. We are here to found fraternally the unity of the human race so that,
sometime, it may present but one fold and one Shepherd."

Then Lincoln spoke again: "I reckon we are near the greatest years in
history. It is a privilege to be alive."

"And young," Dr. Allen added.

"Young! What a God's blessed thing is that!" said Kelso and then he
quoted from Coleridge:

  "'Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying
   Where Hope clung feeding like a bee,
   Both were mine! Life went a maying
   With Nature, Hope and Poesy
   When I was young!'

"Abe, have ye learned the _Cotter's Saturday Night_?"

"Not yet. It's a heavy hog to hold but I'll get a grip on an ear and
a hind leg and lift it out o' the pen before long. You see."

"Don't fail to do that. It will be a help and joy to ye."

"Old Kirkham is a hard master," said Abe. "I hear his bell ringing every
time I get a minute's leisure. I'm nigh through with him. Now I want to
study rhetoric."

"Only schoolmasters study rhetoric," Kelso declared. "A real poet or a
real orator is born with all the rhetoric he needs. We should get our
rhetoric as we get our oxygen--unconsciously--by reading the masters.
Rhetoric is a steed for a light load under the saddle but he's too warm
blooded for the harness. He was for the day of the plumed knight--not for
these times. No man of sense would use a prancing horse on a plow or a
stone boat. A good plow horse is a beautiful thing. The play of his
muscles, the power of his stride are poetry to me but when he tries to
put on style he is ridiculous. That suggests what rhetoric is apt to do
to the untrained intellect. If you've anything to say or write head
straight across, the field and keep your eye on the furrow. Then comes
the sowing and how beautiful is the sower striding across the field in
his suit of blue jeans, with that wonderful gesture, so graceful, so
imperious! Put him in a beaver hat and broadcloth and polished calfskin
and a frilled shirt and you couldn't think of anything more ridiculous!"

In the last diary of Samson Henry Traylor is this entry:

       *       *       *       *       *

"I went to Gettysburg with the President to-day and sat near him when he
spoke. Mr. Everett addressed the crowd for an hour or so. As Kelso would
say 'He rode the prancing steed of Rhetoric.' My old friend went straight
across the field and his look and gestures reminded me of that picture of
the sower which Jack gave us one night long ago in Abe's store. Through
my tears I could see the bucket hanging on his elbow and the good seed
flying far and wide from his great hand. When he finished the field,
plowed and harrowed and fertilized by war, had been sowed for all time.
The spring's work was done and well done."

       *       *       *       *       *

At a quarter of ten the Doctor rose and said:

"We're keeping Abe from his sleep and wearing the night away with
philosophy. I'm going home."

"I came over to see if you could find a man to help me to-morrow," Samson
said to Abe. "Harry is going over to do the chinking alone. I want a man
to help me on the whipsaw while I cut some boards for the upper
flooring."

"I'll help you myself," Abe proposed. "I reckon I'll close the store
to-morrow unless Jack will tend it."

"You can count on me," said Jack. "I'm short of sleep anyhow and a day of
rest will do me good."

Abe went with his friends to the door beyond which the two boys from
Clary's Grove sat as if sound asleep. It is probable, however, that they
had heard what Samson had said to Abe.

"Well, I didn't know these wild turkeys were roosting here," Abe laughed.
He roused them from their slumbers and said: "Boys, you're trying to saw
the day off a little too short. It's got to run till you get to Clary's
Grove. Better take those horses home and feed 'em."

The boys got up and yawned and stretched themselves and mounted their
horses which had been tied to a bar and rode away in the darkness.

Next morning Abe and Samson set out for the woods soon after daylight.

"I like that boy Harry," said Abe. "I reckon he's got good stuff in him.
The way he landed on Bap McNoll was a caution. I like to see a feller
come right up to the scratch, without an invitation just in the nick
o' time, as he did."

"Did you see him jump in?" Samson asked.

"I saw everything some way. I saw you when ye loosened the ear o' John
Callyhan. That tickled me. But the way I felt yesterday--honest, it
seemed as if I could handle 'em all. That boy Harry is a likely young
colt--strong and limber and well put together and broad between the
eyes."

"An' gentle as a kitten," Samson added. "There never was a better face on
a boy or a better heart behind it. We like him."

"Yes, sir. He's a well topped young tree--straight and sound and good
timber. Looks as if that little girl o' Jack's was terribly took up with
him. I don't wonder. There are not many boys like Harry around here."

"What kind of a girl is she?" Samson asked.

"Awful shy since the arrow hit her. She don't know what it means yet.
She'll get used to that I reckon. She's a good girl and smart as a steel
trap. Her father takes her out on the plains with him shooting. She can
handle a gun as well as anybody and ride a horse as if she had growed to
his back. Every body likes Bim but she has her own way of behaving and
sometimes it's awful new-fashioned."

Harry Needles went whistling up the road toward the new house with
sickle, hoe and trowel. As he passed the Kelso cabin he whistled the
tune of _Sweet Nightingale_. It had haunted his mind since he had heard
it in the woods. He whistled as loudly as ever he could and looked at the
windows. Before he had passed Bim's face looked out at him with a smile
and her hand flickered back of the panes and he waved his to her. His
heart beat fast as he hurried along.

"I'm not so very young," he said to himself. "I wish I hadn't put on
these old clothes. Mrs. Traylor is an awful nice woman but she's
determined to make me look like a plow horse. I don't see why she
couldn't let me wear decent clothes."

Sarah had enjoyed mothering the boy. His health had returned. His cheeks
were ruddy, his dark eyes clear and bright, his tall form erect and
sturdy. Moreover the affectionate care his new friends had given him and
his interest in the girl filled his heart with the happiness which is the
rain of youth and without which it becomes an arid desert.

He had helped Alexander Ferguson with the making of the fireplace and
knew how to mix the mortar. He worked with a will for his heart was in
the new home. It was a fine September morning. The warm sunlight had set
the meadow cocks a crowing. The far reaches of the great, grassy plain
were dimmed with haze. It was a vast, flowery wilderness, waving and
murmuring in the breeze like an ocean. How long those acres, sown by the
winds of heaven, had waited for the plowman now arrived!

Harry felt the beauty of the scene but saw and enjoyed more the face of
Bim Kelso as he worked and planned his own house--no cabin but a mansion
like that of Judge Harper in the village near his old home. He had filled
every crevice in the rear wall and was working on the front when he heard
the thunder of running horses and saw those figures, dim in a cloud of
dust, flying up the road again. He thought of the threat of Bap McNoll.
It occurred to him that he would be in a bad way alone with those
ruffians if they were coming for revenge. He stepped into the door of the
house and stood a moment debating what he would best do. He thought of
running toward the grove, which was a few rods from the rear door of the
house, and hiding there. He couldn't bear to run. Bim and all the rest of
them would hear of it. So with the sickle in his right hand he stood
waiting inside the house and hoping they wouldn't stop. They rode up to
the door and dismounted quietly and hobbled their horses. There were five
of them who crowded into the cabin with McNoll in the lead.

"Now, you young rooster, you're goin' to git what's comin' to you," he
growled.

The boy faced them bravely and warned them away with his sickle. They
were prepared for such emergencies. One of them drew a bag of bird shot
from his pocket and hurled it at Harry's head. It hit him full in the
face and he staggered against the wall stunned by the blow. They rushed
upon the boy and disarmed and bore him to the floor. For a little time
he knew not what was passing. When he came to, his hands and feet were
tied and the men stood near, cursing and laughing, while their leader,
McNoll, was draining a bottle. Suddenly he heard a voice trembling with
excitement and wet with tears saying:

"You go 'way from here or I'll kill you dead. So help me God I'll kill
you. If one o' you touches him he's goin' to die."

He saw Bim Kelso at the window with her gun leveled at the head of
McNoll. Her face was red with anger. Her eyes glowed. As he looked a
tear welled from one of them and trailed down the scarlet surface of her
cheek. McNoll turned without a word and walked sulkily out of the back
door. The others crowded after him. They ran as soon as they had got out
of the door. She left the window. In a moment the young men were
galloping away.

Bim came into the house sobbing with emotion but with her head erect.
She stood her gun in a corner and knelt by the helpless boy. He was
crying also. Her hair fell upon his face as she looked at the spot of
deep scarlet color made by the shot bag. She kissed it and held her cheek
against his and whispered: "Don't cry. It's all over now. I'm going to
cut these ropes."

It was as if she had known and loved him always. She was like a young
mother with her first child. Tendeny she wiped his tears away with her
blond, silken hair. She cut his bonds and he rose and stood before her.
Her face changed like magic.

"Oh what a fool I've been!" she exclaimed.

"Why so?" he asked.

"I cried and I kissed you and we never have been introduced to each
other."

She covered her eyes with her hair and with bent head went out of the
door.

"I'll never forget that kiss as long as I live," said the boy as he
followed her. "I'll never forget your help or your crying either."

"How I must have looked!" she went on, walking toward her pony that was
hitched to a near tree.

"You were beautiful!" he exclaimed.

"Go away from me--I won't speak to you," she said. "Go back to your work.
I'll stay here and keep watch."

The boy returned to his task pointing up the inside walls but his mind
and heart were out in the sunlight talking with Bim. Once he looked out
of the door and saw her leaning against the neck of the pony, her face
hidden in his mane. When the sun was low she came to the door and said:

"You had better stop now and go home."

She looked down at the ground and added:

"Please, please, don't tell on me."

"Of course not," he answered. "But I hope you won't be afraid of me any
more."

She looked up at him with a little smile. "Do you think I'm afraid of
_you_?" she asked as if it were too absurd to be thought of. She
unhitched and mounted her pony but did not go.

"I do wish you could raise a mustache," she said, looking wistfully into
his face.

Involuntarily his hand went to his lip.

"I could try," he said.

"I can't bear to see you look so terribly young; you get worse and worse
every time I see you," she scolded plaintively. "I want you to be a
regular man right quick."

He wondered what he ought to say and presently stammered: "I--I--intend
to. I guess I'm more of a man than anybody would think to look at me."

"You're too young to ever fall in love I reckon."

"No I'm not," he answered with decision.

"Have you got a razor?" she asked.

"No."

"I reckon it would be a powerful help. You put soap on your lip and mow
it off with a razor. My father says it makes the grass grow."

There was a moment of silence during which she brushed the mane of her
pony. Then she asked timidly: "Do you play on the flute?"

"No, why?"

"I think it would break my heart. My Uncle Henry plays all day and it
makes him look crazy. Do you like yellow hair?"

"Yes, if it looks like yours."

"If you don't mind I'll put a mustache on you just--just to look at every
time I think of you."

"When I think of you I put violets in your hair," he said.

He took a step toward her as he spoke and as he did so she started her
pony. A little way off she checked him and said:

"I'm sorry. There are no violets now."

She rode away slowly waving her hand and singing with the joy of a bird
in the springtime:

  "My sweetheart, come along
   Don't you hear the glad song
   As the notes of the nightingale flow?
   Don't you hear the fond tale
   Of the sweet nightingale
   As she sings in the valleys below--
   As she sings in the valleys below?"

He stood looking and listening. The song came to him as clear and sweet
as the notes of a vesper bell wandering in miles of silence.

When it had ceased he felt his lip and said: "How slow the time passes!
I'm going to get some shaving soap and a razor."

That evening when Harry was helping Samson with the horses he said:

"I'm going to tell you a secret. I wish you wouldn't say anything about
it."

Samson stood pulling the hair out of his card and looking very stern as
he listened while Harry told of the assault upon him and how Bim had
arrived and driven the rowdies away with her gun but he said not a word
of her demonstration of tender sympathy. To him that had clothed the
whole adventure with a kind of sanctity so that he could not bear to have
it talked about.

Samson's eyes glowed with anger. They searched the face of the boy. His
voice was deep and solemn when he said:

"This is a serious matter. Why do you wish to keep it a secret?"

The boy blushed. For a moment he knew not what to say. Then he spoke: "It
ain't me so much--it's her," he managed to say. "She wouldn't want it to
be talked about and I don't either."

Samson began to understand. "She's quite a girl I guess," he said
thoughtfully. "She must have the nerve of a man--I declare she must."

"Yes-sir-ee! They'd 'a' got hurt if they hadn't gone away, that's sure,"
said Harry.

"We'll look out for them after this," Samson rejoined. "The first time
I meet that man McNoll he'll have to settle with me and he'll pay cash on
the nail."

Bim having heard of Harry's part in Abe's fight and of the fact that he
was to be working alone all day at the new house had ridden out through
the woods to the open prairie and hunted in sight of the new cabin that
afternoon. Unwilling to confess her extreme interest in the boy she had
said not a word of her brave act. It was not shame; it was partly a kind
of rebellion against the tyranny of youthful ardor; it was partly the
fear of ridicule.

So it happened that the adventure of Harry Needles made scarcely a ripple
on the sensitive surface of the village life. It will be seen, however,
that it had started strong undercurrents likely, in time, to make
themselves felt.

The house and barn were finished whereupon Samson and Harry drove to
Springfield--a muddy, crude and growing village with thick woods on its
north side--and bought furniture. Their wagon was loaded and they were
ready to start for home. They were walking on the main street when Harry
touched Samson's arm and whispered:

"There's McNoll and Callyhan."

The pair were walking a few steps ahead of Samson and Harry. In a second
Samson's big hand was on McNoll's shoulder.

"This is Mr. McNoll, I believe," said Samson.

The other turned with a scared look.

"What do ye want o' me?" he demanded.

Samson threw him to the ground with a jerk so strong and violent that it
rent the sleeve from his shoulder. McNoll's companion who had felt the
weight of Samson's hand and had had enough of it turned and ran.

"What do ye want o' me?" McNoll asked again as he struggled to free
himself.

"What do I want o' you--you puny little coward," said Samson, as he
lifted the bully to his feet and gave him a toss and swung him in the air
and continued to address him. "I'm just goin' to muss you up proper. If
you don't say you're sorry and mean it I'll put a tow string on your neck
and give you to some one that wants a dog."

"I'm sorry," said McNoll. "Honest I am! I was drunk when I done it."

Samson released his prisoner. A number in the crowd which had gathered
around them clapped their hands and shouted, "Hurrah for the stranger!"

A constable took Samson's hand and said: "You deserve a vote of thanks.
That man and his friends have made me more trouble than all the rest of
the drinking men put together."

"And I am making trouble for myself," said Samson. "I have made myself
ashamed. I am no fighting man, I was never in such a muss on a public
street before and with God's help it will never happen again."

"Where do you live?" the officer asked.

"In New Salem."

"I wish it was here. We need men like you. What part of the East do you
hail from?"

"Vermont," Samson answered. "I've just bought land and built a cabin a
little west of the village. Came here for a load of furniture."

"I'm a Maine man and a Whig and opposed to slavery and my name is Erastus
Wright," said the constable.

"I am a Whig and against slavery," Samson volunteered.

"I could tell that by the look of you," said the constable. "Some day we
must sit down together and talk things over."

Samson wrote in his diary:

       *       *       *       *       *

"On the way home my heart was sore. I prayed in silence that God would
forgive me for my bad example to the boy. I promised that I would not
again misuse the strength He has given me. In my old home I would have
been disgraced by it. The minister would have preached of the destruction
that follows the violent man to put him down; the people would have
looked askance at me. Deacon Somers would have called me aside to look
into my soul, and Judge Grandy and his wife would not have invited me to
their parties. Here it's different. A chap who can take the law in his
hands and bring the evil man to his senses, even if he has to hit him
over the head, is looked up to. That day a number of men and boys
increased my shame by following us to the wagon and wanting to shake
hands and feel of my muscles and paining my soul with praise. It's a
reckless country. You feel it as soon as you get here. In time, I fear,
I shall be as headlong as the rest of them. Some way the news of my act
has got here from Springfield. Sarah was kind of cut up. Jack Kelso has
nicknamed me 'The man with the iron arms,' and Abe, who is a better man
every way, laughs at my embarrassment and says I ought to feel honored.
For one thing Jack Armstrong has become a good citizen. His wife has
foxed a pair of breeches for Abe. They say McNoll has left the country.
There has been no deviltry here since that day. I guess the gang is
broken up--too much iron in its way."

       *       *       *       *       *

Sarah enjoyed fixing up the cabin. Jack Kelso had given her some deer and
buffalo skins to lay on the floors. The upper room, reached by a stick
ladder, had its two beds, one of which Harry occupied. The children slept
below in a trundle bed that was pushed under the larger one when it was
made up in the morning.

"Some time I'm going to put in a windletrap and get rid o' that stick
ladder," Samson had said.

Sarah had all the arts of the New England home maker. Under her hand the
cabin, in color, atmosphere and general neatness, would have delighted a
higher taste than was to be found on the prairies, save in the brain of
Kelso who really had some acquaintance with beauty. To be sure the bed
was in one corner, spread with its upper cover knit of gray yarn
harmonizing in color with the bark of the log walls. A handsome dark
brown buffalo robe lay beside it. The rifle and powder horn were hung
above the mantel. The fireplace had its crane of wrought iron.

Every one in the little village came to the house warming.

"There is nothing in America so beautiful as 'this here kind o' thing'
when the firelight shines upon it," said Kelso who often indulged in the
vernacular of the real ladder climbers.

"Well, of course, it isn't like Boston or New York," Sarah answered.

"Thank God!" Kelso exclaimed. "New York hurts my feelings, so many of its
buildings are of grand design and small proportions. Mrs. Traylor, you
are lucky to have this beautiful island in an ocean of music. There is
music in the look and sound of these meadows--bird music, wind music,
the level music of Felician David's Desert. Perhaps you don't know about
that and really it doesn't matter. Traylor, tune up your fiddle."

Samson began to play, stopping often to give the hand of welcome to a
guest. The people of New Salem were in their best clothes. The women wore
dresses of new calico--save Mrs. Dr. Allen, who wore a black silk dress
which had come with her from her late home in Lexington. Bim Kelso came
in a dress of red muslin trimmed with white lace. Ann Rutledge also wore
a red dress and came with Abe. The latter was rather grotesque in his new
linsey trousers, of a better length than the former pair, but still too
short.

"It isn't fair to blame the trousers or the tailor," he had said when he
had tried them on. "My legs are so long that the imagination of the
tailor is sure to fall short if the cloth don't. Next time I'll have 'em
made to measure with a ten-foot pole instead of a yardstick. If they're
too long I can roll 'em up and let out a link or two when they shrink.
Ever since I was a boy I have been troubled with shrinking pants."

Abe wore a blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons, the tails of which
were so short as to be well above the danger of pressure when he sat
down. His cowhide shoes had been well blackened; the blue yarn of his
socks showed above them. "These darned socks of mine are rather proud and
conceited," he used to say. "They like to show off."

He wore a shirt of white, unbleached cotton, a starched collar and black
tie.

In speaking of his collar to Samson, he said that he felt like a wild
horse in a box stall.

Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, was there--a smooth-faced man with a
large head, sandy hair and a small mustache, who spoke by note, as it
were. Kelso called him the great articulator and said that he walked in
the valley of the shadow of Lindley Murray. He seemed to keep a watchful
eye on his words, as if they were a lot of schoolboys not to be trusted.
They came out with a kind of self-conscious rectitude.

The children's games had begun and the little house rang with their songs
and laughter, while their elders sat by the fire and along the walls
talking. Ann Rutledge and Bim Kelso and Harry Needles and John McNeil
played with them. In one of the dances all joined in singing the verses:

  I won't have none o' yer' weevily wheat,
    I won't have none o' yer barley;
  I won't have none o' yer' weevily wheat,
    To make a cake for Charley.

  Charley is a fine young man,
    Charley is a dandy,
  Charley likes to kiss the girls,
    Whenever it comes handy.

When a victim was caught in the flying scrimmage at the end of a passage
in the game of Prisoners, he or she was brought before a blindfolded
judge:

"Heavy, heavy hangs over your head," said the Constable.

"Fine or superfine?" the judge inquired.

"Fine," said the Constable, which meant that the victim was a boy. Then
the sentence was pronounced and generally it was this:

"Go bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest and kiss the one that you
love best."

Harry was the first prisoner. He went straight to Bim Kelso and bowed and
knelt, and when he had risen she turned and ran like a scared deer around
the chairs and the crowd of onlookers, some assisting and some checking
her flight, before the nimble youth. Hard pressed, she ran out of the
open door, with a merry laugh, and just beyond the steps Harry caught
and kissed her, and her cheeks had the color of roses when he led her
back.

John McNeil kissed Ann Rutledge that evening and was most attentive to
her, and the women were saying that the two had fallen in love with each
other.

"See how she looks at him," one of them whispered.

"Well, it's just the way he looks at her," the other answered.

At the first pause in the merriment Kelso stood on a chair, and then
silence fell upon the little company.

"My good neighbors," he began, "we are here to rejoice that new friends
have come to us and that a new home is born in our midst. We bid them
welcome. They are big boned, big hearted folks. No man has grown large
who has not at one time or another had his feet in the soil and felt its
magic power going up into his blood and bone and sinew. Here is a
wonderful soil and the inspiration of wide horizons; here are broad and
fertile fields. Where the corn grows high you can grow statesmen. It may
be that out of one of these little cabins a man will come to carry the
torch of Liberty and Justice so high that its light will shine into every
dark place. So let no one despise the cabin--humble as it is. Samson and
Sarah Traylor, I welcome and congratulate you. Whatever may come, you can
find no better friends than these, and of this you may be sure, no child
of the prairies will ever go about with a hand organ and a monkey. Our
friend, Honest Abe, is one of the few rich men in this neighborhood.
Among his assets are Kirkham's Grammar, _The Pilgrim's Progress_, the
Lives of Washington and Henry Clay, Hamlet's Soliloquy, Othello's
Speech to the Senate, Marc Antony's address and a part of Webster's reply
to Hayne. A man came along the other day and sold him a barrel of rubbish
for two bits. In it he found a volume of Blackstone's _Commentaries_. Old
Blackstone challenged him to a wrestle and Abe has grappled with him. I
reckon he'll take his measure as easily as he took Jack Armstrong's.
Lately he has got possession of a noble asset. It is the _Cotter's
Saturday Night_, by Robert Burns. I propose to ask him to let us share
his enjoyment of this treasure."

Abe, who had been sitting with his legs doubled beneath him on a buffalo
skin, between Joe and Betsey Traylor, rose and said:

"Mr. Kelso's remarks, especially the part which applied to me, remind me
of the story of the prosperous grocer of Joliet. One Saturday night he
and his boys were busy selling sausage. Suddenly in came a man with whom
he had quarreled and laid two dead cats on the counter.

"'There,' said he, 'this makes seven to-day. I'll call Monday and get my
money.'

"We were doing a good business here making fun. It seems a pity to ruin
it and throw suspicion on the quality of the goods by throwing a cat on
the counter. I'll only throw one cat. It is entitled:

  MY SISTER SUE

 "Say, boys, I guess 'at none o' you
  Has ever seen my sister Sue,
  She kin rassle an' turn han'springs kerflop,
  But Jimmy Crimps!--ye should see her hop!
        Yes, sir!

 "She kin h'ist one foot an' go like Ned!
  An' hop on top o' my mother's bed,
  An' back an' round the house she'll go,
  'Ith her ol' knee as limber as a hickory bow,
        Yes, sir!

 "She kin sing a hull song 'ithout ketchin' her breath,
  An' make up a face 'at 'ud scare ye to death!
  She kin wiggle her ears an' cross her eyes
  An' stick out her tongue till yer hair 'ud rise.
        Yes, sir!

 "An' play wildcat on her han's an' knees,
  Honest! 'T would give ye the gibberees!
  An' she sneaks along an' jumps at you
  An' gives sech a yell!--my sister Sue!
        Yes, sir!

 "She kin shoot off a gun an' set a trap,
  An' if you don't behave she kin give you a slap
  She kin holler and scream like a flock o' geese
  An' stan' on her head an' speak a piece.
        Yes, sir!

 "She kin run cross legged an' ride a cow,
  An' jump from the beam to the big hay mow.
  I reckon yer hair 'ud stan' up to see 'er
  A breakin' a colt er throwin' a steer,
        Yes, sir!

 "My sister Susan has got a beau.
  When he comes she sets an' acts jes' so,
  An' talks so proper--it's zac'ly jes
  Like the flummididles on her dress,
        Yes, sir!

 "When she stan's in that darn ol' Sunday gown
  Ye'd think a grasshopper could knock 'er down.
  An' she laughs kind o' sick--like a kitten's mew--
  Ye wouldn't think 'twas my sister Sue,
        No, sir!

 "An' she says: 'Oh, dear! those horrid boys!
  They act so rough an' make sech a noise!'
  Good gracious! ye wouldn't think 'at she
  Could talk as loud as a bumble bee--
        No, sirs

 "Honest! Er lift a chip o' wood,
  She acts so puny an' nice an' good!
  'Boys are awful!' she says, 'till they're grown,
  Er nelse they got to be yer own!'
        Oh, gosh!"

This raised a storm of merriment, after which he recited the poem of
Burns, with keen appreciation of its quality. Samson repeatedly writes of
his gift for interpretation, especially of the comic, and now and then
lays particular stress on his power of mimicry.

John Cameron sang _The Sword of Bunker Hill_ and _Forty Years Ago, Tom_.
Samson played while the older people danced until midnight. Then, after
noisy farewells, men, women and children started in the moonlit road
toward the village. Ann Rutledge had Abe on one arm and John McNeil on
the other.




CHAPTER VI

WHICH DESCRIBES THE LONELY LIFE IN A PRAIRIE CABIN AND STIRRING ADVENTURE
ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD ABOUT THE TIME IT BEGAN OPERATIONS.


When Samson paid Mr. Gollaher, a "detector" came with the latter to look
at the money before it was accepted. There were many counterfeits and
bills good only at a certain discount of face value, going about those
days and the detector was in great request. Directly after moving in,
Samson dug a well and lined it with a hollow log. He bought tools and
another team and then he and Harry began their fall plowing. Day after
day for weeks they paced with their turning furrows until a hundred
acres, stretching half a mile to the west and well to the north of the
house, were black with them. Fever and ague descended upon the little
home in the early winter.

In a letter to her brother, dated January 4th, 1832, Sarah writes:

       *       *       *       *       *

"We have been longing for news from home, but not a word has come from
you. It don't seem as if we could stand it unless we hear from you or
some of the folks once in a while. We are not dead just because we are a
thousand miles away. We want to hear from you. Please write and let us
know how father and mother are and all the news. Is Elizabeth Ranney
married yet, and how does the minister get along with his new wife? We
have all been sick with the fever and ague. It is a beautiful country and
the soil very rich, but there is some sickness. Samson and I were both
sick at the same time. I never knew Samson to give up before. He couldn't
go on, his head ached so. Little Joe helped me get the fire started and
brought some water and waited on us. Then the little man put on his coat
and mittens and trudged away to the village with Betsey after the doctor.
Harry Needles had gone away to Springfield for Mr. Offut with a drove of
hogs. Two other boys are with him. He is going to buy a new suit. He is a
very proud boy. Joe and Betsey got back with the doctor at nine. That
night Abe Lincoln came and sat up with us and gave us our medicine and
kept the fire going. It was comical to see him lying beside Joe in his
trundle bed, with his long legs sticking over the end of it and his feet
standing on the floor about a yard from the bed. He was spread all over
the place. He talked about religion, and his views would shock most of
our friends in the East. He doesn't believe in the kind of Heaven that
the ministers talk about or any eternal hell. He says that nobody knows
anything about the hereafter, except that God is a kind and forgiving
father and that all men are His children. He says that we can only serve
God by serving each other. He seems to think that every man, good or bad,
black or white, rich or poor, is his brother. He thinks that Henry Clay,
next to Daniel Webster, is the greatest man in the country. He is
studying hard. Expects to go out and make speeches for Clay next summer.
He is quite severe in his talk against General Jackson. He and Samson
agree in politics and religion. They are a good deal alike. He is very
fond of Samson and Harry--calls them his partners. He said to Samson the
other evening.

"I want you for a friend always. If you can stand it, I would like my
story to be a part of yours. If you say so, we'll stick to the same boat
and pole her over the shoals and carry her across the bends and see if we
can get to good going in deep water. When the channel will permit, we can
put in a steam engine.'

"We love this big awkward giant. His feet are set in the straight way and
we think that he is going to make his mark in the world.

"When I went to sleep he lay in the trundle bed, with two candles burning
on the stand beside him, reading that big green book of mine entitled
_The Works of William Shakespeare_. He had brought a law book with him,
but he got interested in William Shakespeare and couldn't let it alone.
He said that he was like a mired horse whenever he began to read a play
of the immortal bard, and that he had to take his time in getting out.
When he went away next morning he borrowed Samson's pack basket. I felt
bad because we couldn't go and make any arrangements with Santa Claus for
the children. Joe was dreadfully worried, for Betsey had told him that
Santa Claus never came to children whose father and mother were sick.
Christmas Eve Abe came with the pack basket chock-full of good things
after the children were asleep. He took out a turkey and knit caps and
mittens and packages of candy and raisins for the children and some cloth
for a new dress for me. Mrs. Kelso had come to spend the night with us,
although Samson and I were so much better it really wasn't necessary. I
made her go up the ladder to bed before midnight. That evening a short,
fat Santa Claus came in with a loaded pack. He had a long, brown beard
and a red nose and carried a new clay pipe in his mouth and was very much
bundled up.

"We called the children. They stood looking at Santa Claus, and Santa
Claus stood looking at them. He gave them mufflers and some candy hearts
and tried to pick them up. They ran away and he chased them under our bed
and got hold of Joe's foot and tried to pull him out, and Joe hollored
like a painter, and Santa Claus dropped his pipe and sat down on the
floor and began laughing. I saw it was Bim Kelso. Abe left with her, and
I suppose they went back to the village and around in a regular Santa
Claus spree.

"Mrs. Kelso said that she had been making a beard of pieces of buffalo
skin and fitting up an old suit of her father's clothes that afternoon.
I wonder what she'll do next. It's terrible to be so much in love and not
quite seventeen. Harry is as bad as she is. I wish they had been a little
older before they met.

"Joe said yesterday that he was going back to Vergennes.

"'How are you going to get there?' I asked.

"'Abe's going to make me a pair o' wings, and I'm going to smash right up
through the sky and go awa-a-y off to Vergennes and play with Ben and
Lizzie Tyler. Abe says there ain't no bad roads up there.'

"I asked him what I should do if he went away and left me like that.

"'Oh, I'll come right back,' he said, 'and maybe I'll see Heaven way up
in the clouds. If I do I'll stop there in a tavern over night and buy
something for you.'

"In a minute a new idea came to him and he said:

"'I guess Abe would make a pair of wings for you if you'd ask him.'

"Often I wish for wings, and always when I think of those who are dear
to me and so far away. You said you would come out next spring to look
about. Please don't disappoint us. I think it would almost break my
heart. I am counting the days. Some time ago I put down 142 straight
marks on my old slate, that being the number of days before May 1. Every
night I rub off one of them and thank God that you are one day nearer.
Don't be afraid of fever and ague. Sapington's pills cure it in three or
four days. I would take the steamboat at Pittsburg, the roads in Ohio and
Indiana are so bad. You can get a steamer up the Illinois River at Alton
and get off at Beardstown and drive across country. If we knew when you
were coming Samson or Abe would meet you. Give our love to all the folks
and friends.

"Yours affectionately,

"Sarah and Samson."

       *       *       *       *       *

It had been a cold winter and not easy to keep comfortable in the little
house. In the worst weather Samson used to get up at night to keep the
fire going. Late in January a wind from the southeast melted the snow and
warmed the air of the midlands so that, for a week or so, it seemed as if
spring were come. One night of this week Sambo awoke the family with his
barking. A strong wind was rushing across the plains and roaring over the
cabin and wailing in its chimney. Suddenly there was a rap on its door.
When Samson opened it he saw in the moonlight a young colored man and
woman standing near the door-step.

"Is dis Mistah Traylor?" the young man asked.

"It is," said Samson. "What can I do for you?"

"Mas'r, de good Lord done fotched us here to ask you fo' help," said the
negro. "We be nigh wone out with cold an' hungah, suh, 'deed we be."

Samson asked them in and put wood on the fire, and Sarah got up and made
some hot tea and brought food from the cupboard and gave it to the
strangers, who sat shivering in the firelight. They were a good-looking
pair, the young woman being almost white. They were man and wife. The
latter stopped eating and moaned and shook with emotion as her husband
told their story. Their master had died the year before and they had been
brought to St. Louis to be sold in the slave market. There they had
escaped by night and gone to the house of an old friend of their former
owner who lived north of the city on the river shore. He had taken pity
on them and brought them across the Mississippi and started them on the
north road with a letter to Elijah Lovejoy of Alton and a supply of food.
Since then they had been hiding days in the swamps and thickets and had
traveled by night. Mr. Lovejoy had sent them to Erastus Wright of
Springfield, and Mr. Wright had given them the name of Samson Traylor and
the location of his cabin. From there they were bound for the house of
John Peasley, in Hopedale, Tazewell County.

Lovejoy had asked them to keep the letter with which they had begun their
travels. Under its signature he had written: "I know the writer and know
that the above was written with his own hand. His word can be relied
upon. To all who follow or respect the example of Jesus Christ I commend
this man and woman."

The letter stated that their late master had often expressed his purpose
of leaving them their freedom when he should pass away. He had left no
will and since his death the two had fallen into the hands of his nephew,
a despotic, violent young drunkard of the name of Biggs, who had ruled
his servants with club and bull whip and who in a temper had killed a
young negro a few months before. The fugitives said that they would
rather die than go back to him.

Samson was so moved by their story that he hitched up his horses and put
some hay in the wagon box and made off with the fugitives up the road to
the north in the night. When daylight came he covered them with the hay.
About eight o'clock he came to a frame house and barn, the latter being
of unusual size for that time and country. Above the door of the barn
was a board which bore the stenciled legend: "John Peasley, Orwell Farm."

As Samson drew near the house he observed a man working on the roof of
a woodshed. Something familiar in his look held the eye of the New Salem
man. In half a moment he recognized the face of Henry Brimstead. It was
now a cheerful face. Brimstead came down the ladder and they shook hands.

"Good land o' Goshen! How did you get here?" Samson asked. Brimstead
answered:

"Through the help of a feller that looks like you an' the grit of a pair
o' hosses. Come down this road early in September on my way to the land
o' plenty. Found Peasley here. Couldn't help it. Saw his name on the
barn. Used to go to school with him in Orwell. He offered to sell me some
land with a house on it an' trust me for his pay. I liked the looks o'
the country and so I didn't go no further. I was goin' to write you a
letter, but I hain't got around to it yet. Ain't forgot what you done for
us, I can tell ye that."

"Well, this looks better than the sand plains--a lot better--and you look
better than that flea farmer back in York State. How are the children?"

"Fat an' happy an' well dressed. Mrs. Peasley has been a mother to 'em
an' her sister is goin' to be a wife to me." He came close to Samson and
added in a confidential tone: "Say, if I was any happier I'd be scairt.
I'm like I was when I got over the toothache--so scairt for fear it would
come back I was kind o' miserable."

Mr. Peasley came out of the door. He was a big, full bearded, jovial man.

"I've got a small load o' hay for you," said Samson.

"I was expecting it, though I supposed 'twould be walkin'--in the dark o'
the night," Peasley answered. "Drive in on the barn floor."

When Samson had driven into the barn its doors were closed and the
negroes were called from their place of hiding. Samson writes:

       *       *       *       *       *

"I never realized what a blessing it is to be free until I saw that
scared man and woman crawling out from under the dusty hay and shaking
themselves like a pair of dogs. The weather was not cold or I guess they
would have been frozen. They knelt together on the barn floor and the
woman prayed for God's protection through the day. I knew what slavery
must mean when I saw what they were suffering to get away from it. When
they came in the night I felt the call of God to help them. Now I knew
that I was among the chosen to lead in a great struggle. Peasley brought
food for them and stowed them away on the top of his hay mow with a pair
of buffalo skins. I suppose they got some sleep there. I went into the
house to breakfast and while I ate Brimstead told me about his trip. His
children were there. They looked clean and decent. He lived in a log
cabin a little further up the road. Mrs. Peasley's sister waited on me.
She is a fat and cheerful looking lady, very light complected. Her hair
is red--like tomato ketchup. Looks to me a likely, stout armed, good
hearted woman who can do a lot of hard work. She can see a joke and has
an answer handy every time."

       *       *       *       *       *

For details of the remainder of the historic visit of Samson Traylor to
the home of John Peasley we are indebted to a letter from John to his
brother Charles, dated February 21, 1832. In this he says:

       *       *       *       *       *

"We had gone out to the barn and Brimstead and I were helping Mr. Traylor
hitch up his horses. All of a sudden two men came riding up the road
at a fast trot and turned in and come straight toward us and pulled up
by the wagon. One of them was a slim, red cheeked young feller about
twenty-three years old. He wore top boots and spurs and a broad brimmed
black hat and gloves and a fur waistcoat and purty linen. He looked at
the tires of the wagon and said: 'That's the one we've followed.'

"'Which o' you is Samson Traylor?' he asked.

"'I am,' said Traylor.

"The young feller jumped off his horse and tied him to the fence. Then he
went up to Traylor and said:

"What did you do with my niggers, you dirty sucker?'

"Men from Missouri hated the Illinois folks them clays and called 'em
Suckers. We always call a Missouri man a name too dirty to be put in a
letter. He acted like one o' the Roman emperors ye read of.

"'Hain't you a little reckless, young feller?' Traylor says, as cool
as a cucumber.

"I didn't know Traylor them days. If I had, I'd 'a' been prepared for
what was comin'.

"Traylor stood up nigh the barn door, which Brimstead had closed after we
backed the wagon out.

"The young feller stepped close to the New Salem man and raised his whip
for a blow. Quick as lightnin' Traylor grabbed him and threw him ag'in'
the barn door, keewhack! He hit so hard the boards bent and the whole
barn roared and trembled. The other feller tried to get his pistol out of
its holster, but Brimstead, who stood beside him, grabbed it, and I got
his hoss by the bits and, we both held on. The young feller lay on the
ground shakin' as if he had the ague. Ye never see a man so spylt in a
second. Traylor picked him up. His right arm was broke and his face and
shoulder bruised some. Ye'd a thought a steam engyne had blowed up while
he was puttin' wood in it. He was kind o' limp and the mad had leaked out
o' him.

"'I reckon I better find a doctor,' he says.

"'You get into my wagon and I'll take ye to a good one,' says Traylor.

"Just then Stephen Nuckles, the circuit minister, rode in with the big
bloodhound that follers him around.

"The other slaver had got off his hoss in the scrimmage. Traylor started
for him. The slaver began to back away and suddenly broke into a run. The
big dog took after him with a kind of a lion roar. We all began yelling
at the dog. We made more noise than you'd hear at the end of a hoss race.
It scairt the young feller. He put on more steam and went up the ladder
to the roof of the woodshed like a chased weasel. The dog stood barkin'
as if he had treed a bear. Traylor grabbed the ladder and pulled it down.

"'You stay there till I get away an' you'll be safe,' said he.

"The man looked down and swore and shook his fist and threatened us with
the law.

"Mr. Nuckles rode close to the woodshed and looked up at him.

"'My brother, I fear you be not a Christian,' he said.

"He swore at the minister. That settled him.

"'What's all this erbout?' Mr. Nuckles asked me.

"'He and his friend are from Missouri,' I says. 'They're lookin' for some
runaway slaves an' they come here and pitched into us, and one got
throwed ag'in' the barn an' the other clum to the roof.'

"'I reckon he better stay thar till he gits a little o' God's grace in
his soul,' says the minister.

"Then he says to the dog: 'Ponto, you keep 'im right thar.'

"The dog appeared to understand what was expected of him.

"The minister got off his hoss and hitched him and took off his coat and
put it on the ground.

"'What you goin' to do?' I says.

"'Me?' says the minister. 'I be goin' to rassle with Satan for the soul
o' that 'ar man, an' if you keep watch I reckon you'll see 'at the
ground'll be scratched up some 'fore I git through.'

"He loosened his collar an' knelt on his coat and began to pray that the
man's soul would see its wickedness and repent. You could have heard him
half a mile away.

"Mr. Traylor drove off with the damaged slaver settin' beside him and the
saddle hoss hitched to the rear axle. I see my chance an' before that
prayer ended I had got the fugitives under some hay in my wagon and
started off with them on my way to Livingston County. I could hear the
prayin' until I got over the hill into Canaan barrens. At sundown I left
them in good hands thirty miles up the road."

       *       *       *       *       *

In a frontier newspaper of that time it is recorded that the minister and
his dog kept the slaver on the roof all day, vainly trying with prayer
and exhortation to convert his soul. The man stopped swearing before
dinner and on his promise not again to violate the commandment a good
meal was handed up to him. He was liberated at sundown and spent the
night with Brimstead.

"Who is that big sucker who grabbed my friend?" the stranger asked
Brimstead.

"His name is Samson Traylor. Comes from Vermont," was the answer.

"He's the dog-gonedest steam engyne of a man I ever see, 'pon my word,"
said the stranger.

"An' he's about the gentlest, womern hearted critter that ever drawed the
breath o' life," said Brimstead.

"If he don't look out 'Liph Biggs'll kill him--certain."

Samson spoke not more than a dozen words on his way back to New Salem.
Amazed and a little shocked by his own conduct, he sat thinking. After
all he had heard and seen, the threat of the young upstart had provoked
him beyond his power of endurance. Trained to the love of liberty and
justice, the sensitive mind of the New Englander had been hurt by the
story of the fugitives. Upon this hurt the young man had poured the
turpentine of haughty, imperial manners. In all the strange adventure it
seemed to him that he had felt the urge of God--in the letter of Lovejoy,
in the prayers of the negro woman and the minister, in his own wrath. The
more he thought of it the less inclined he was to reproach himself for
his violence. Slavery was a relic of ancient imperialism. It had no right
in free America. There could be no peace with it save for a little time.
He would write to his friends of what he had learned of the brutalities
of slavery. The Missourians would tell their friends of the lawless and
violent men of the North, who cared not a fig for the property rights of
a southerner. The stories would travel like fire in dry grass.

So, swiftly, the thoughts of men were being prepared for the great battle
lines of the future. Samson saw the peril of it.

As they rode along young Mr. Biggs took a flask half full of whisky from
his pocket and offered it to Samson. The latter refused this tender of
courtesy and the young man drank alone. He complained of pain and Samson
made a sling of his muffler and put it over the neck and arm of the
injured Biggs and drove with care to avoid jolting. For the first time
Samson took a careful and sympathetic look at him. He was a handsome
youth, about six feet tall, with dark eyes and hair and a small black
mustache and teeth very white and even.

In New Salem Samson took him to Dr. Allen's office and helped the doctor
in setting the broken bone. Then he went to Offut's store and found Abe
reading his law book and gave him an account of his adventure.

"I'm both glad and sorry," said Abe. "I'm glad that you licked the slaver
and got the negroes out of his reach. I reckon I'd have done the same if
I could. I'm sorry because it looks to me like the beginning of many
troubles. The whole subject of slavery is full of danger. Naturally
southern men will fight for their property, and there is a growing number
in the North who will fight for their principles. If we all get to
fighting, I wonder what will become of the country. It reminds me of the
man who found a skunk in his house. His boy was going after the critter
with a club.

"'Look here, boy,' he said, 'when you've got a skunk in the house, it's
a good time to be careful. You might spyle the skunk with that club, but
the skunk would be right certain to spyle the house. While he's our
guest, I reckon we'll have to be polite, whether we want to or not.'"

"Looks to me as if that skunk had come to stay until he's put out," said
Samson.

"That may be," Abe answered. "But I keep hopin' that we can swap a hen
for the house and get rid of him. Anyhow, it's a good time to be
careful."

"He may be glad to live with me, but I ain't willin' to live with him,"
Samson rejoined. "I ain't awful proud, but his station in life is a
leetle too far below mine. If I tried to live with him, I would get the
smell on my soul so that St. Peter would wonder what to do with me."

Abe laughed.

"That touches the core of the trouble," said he. "In the North most men
have begun to think of the effect of slavery on the soul; in the South a
vast majority are thinking of its effect on the pocket. One stands for a
moral and the other for a legal right."

"But one is righter than the other," Samson insisted.

That evening Samson set down the events of the day in his book and quoted
the dialogue in Offut's store in which he had had a part. On the first of
February, 1840, he put these words under the entry:

"I wouldn't wonder if this was the first trip on the Underground
Railroad."




CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH MR. ELIPHALET BIGGS GETS ACQUAINTED WITH BIM KELSO AND HER
FATHER.


In a musty old ledger kept by James Rutledge, the owner of Rutledge's
Tavern, in the year 1832, is an entry under the date of January 31st
which reads as follows:

"Arrived this day Eliphalet Biggs of 26 Olive Street, St. Louis, with one
horse."

Young Mr. Biggs remained at Rutledge's Tavern for three weeks with his
arm in a sling under the eye of the good doctor. The Rutledges were
Kentucky folk and there the young man had found a sympathetic hearing and
tender care. Dr. Allen had forbidden him the use of ardent spirits while
the bone was knitting and so these three weeks were a high point in his
life so to speak.

It had done him good to be hurled against a barn door and to fall
trembling and confused at the feet of his master. He had never met his
master until he had reached Hopedale that morning. The event had been too
long delayed. Encouraged by idleness and conceit and alcohol, evil
passions had grown rank in the soil of his spirit. Restraint had been a
thing unknown to him. He had ruled the little world in which he had lived
by a sense of divine right. He was a prince of Egoland--that province of
America which had only half yielded itself to the principles of
Democracy.

Sobriety and the barn door had been a help to his soul. More of these
heroic remedies might have saved him. He was like one exiled, for a term,
from his native heath. After the ancient fashion of princes, he had at
first meditated the assassination of the man who had blocked his way.
Deprived of the heat of alcohol, his purpose sickened and died.

It must be said that he served his term as a sober human being quite
gracefully, being a well born youth of some education. A few days he
spent mostly in bed, while his friend, who had come on from Hopedale,
took care of him. Soon he began to walk about and his friend returned to
St. Louis.

His fine manners and handsome form and face captured the little village,
most of whose inhabitants had come from Kentucky. They knew a gentleman
when they saw him. They felt a touch of awe in his presence. Mr. Biggs
claimed to have got his hurt by a fall from his horse, pride leading him
to clothe the facts in prevarication. If the truth had been known Samson
would have suffered a heavy loss of popularity in New Salem.

A week after his arrival Ann Rutledge walked over to Jack Kelso's with
him. Bim fled up the stick ladder as soon as they entered the door. Mr.
Kelso was away on a fox hunt. Ann went to the ladder and called:

"Bim, I saw you fly up that ladder. Come back down. Here's a right nice
young man come to see you."

"Is he good-looking?" Bim called.

"Oh, purty as a picture, black eyes and hair and teeth like pearls, and
tall and straight, and he's got a be-e-autiful little mustache."

"That's enough!" Bim exclaimed. "I just wish there was a knot hole in
this floor."

"Come on down here," Ann urged.

"I'm scared," was the answer.

"His cheeks are as red as roses and he's got a lovely ring and big watch
chain--pure gold and yaller as a dandelion. You come down here."

"Stop," Bim answered. "I'll be down as soon as I can get on my best bib
and tucker."

She was singing _Sweet Nightingale_ as she began "to fix up," while Ann
and Mr. Biggs were talking with Mrs. Kelso.

"Ann," Bim called in a moment, "had I better put on my red dress or my
blue?"

"Yer blue, and be quick about it."

"Don't you let him get away after all this trouble."

"I won't."

In a few minutes Bim called from the top of the ladder to Ann. The latter
went and looked up at her. Both girls burst into peals of merry laughter.
Bim had put on a suit of her father's old clothes and her buffalo skin
whiskers and was a wild sight.

"Don't you come down looking like that," said Ann. "I'll go up there and
'tend to you."

Ann climbed the ladder and for a time there was much laughing and
chattering in the little loft. By and by Ann came down. Bim hesitated,
laughing, above the ladder for a moment, and presently followed in her
best blue dress, against which the golden curls of her hair fell
gracefully. With red cheeks and bright eyes, she was a glowing picture.
Very timidly she gave her hand to Mr. Biggs.

"It's just the right dress," he said. "It goes so well with your hair.
I'm glad to see you. I have never seen a girl like you in my life."

"If I knew how, I'd look different," said Bim. "I reckon I look cross.
Cows have done it. Do you like cows?"

"I hate cows--I've got a thousand cows and I see as little of them as
possible," said he.

"It is such a pleasure to hate cows!" Bim exclaimed. "There's nothing I
enjoy so much."

"Why?" Ann asked.

"I am not sure, but I think it is because they give milk--such quantities
of milk! Sometimes I lie awake at night hating cows. There are so many
cows here it keeps me busy."

"Bim has to milk a cow--that's the reason," said Ann.

"I'd like to come over and see her do it," said Mr. Biggs.

"If you do I'll milk in your face--honest I will," said Bim.

"I wouldn't care if it rained milk. I'm going to come and see you often,
if your mother will let me."

A blush spread over the girl's cheeks to the pretty dimple at the point
of her chin.

"You'll see her scampering up the ladder like a squirrel," said Mrs.
Kelso. "She isn't real tame yet."

"Perhaps we could hide the ladder," he suggested, with a smile.

"Do you play on the flute?" Bim asked.

"No," said Mr. Biggs.

"I was afraid," Bim exclaimed. "My Uncle Henry does." She looked into Mr.
Biggs' eyes.

"You like fun--don't you?" he said.

"Have you got a snare drum?" Bim queried.

"No. What put that into your head?" Mr. Biggs asked, a little mystified.

"I don't know. I thought I'd ask. My Uncle Henry has a snare drum. That's
one reason we came to Illinois."

Mr. Biggs laughed. "That smile of yours is very becoming," he said.

"Did you ever dream of a long legged, brindle cat with yellow eyes and
a blue tail?" she asked, as if to change the subject.

"Never!"

"I wisht you had. Maybe you'd know how to scare it away. It carries on
so."

"I know what would fix that cat," said Mrs. Kelso. "Give him the hot
biscuits which you sometimes eat for supper. He'll never come again."

At this point Mr. Kelso returned with his gun on his shoulder and was
introduced to Mr. Biggs.

"I welcome you to the hazards of my fireside," said Kelso. "So you're
from St. Louis and stopped for repairs in this land of the ladder
climbers. Sit down and I'll put a log on the fire."

"Thank you, I must go," said Biggs. "The doctor will be looking for me
now."

"Can I not stay you with flagons?" Kelso asked.

"The doctor has forbidden me all drink but milk and water."

"A wise man is Dr. Allen!" Kelso exclaimed. "Cervantes was right in
saying that too much wine will neither keep a secret nor fulfill a
promise."

"Will you make me a promise?" Bim asked of Mr. Biggs, as he was leaving
the door with Ann.

"Anything you will ask," he answered.

"Please don't ever look at the new moon through a knot hole," she said in
a half whisper.

The young man laughed. "Why not?"

"If you do, you'll never get married."

"I mustn't look at the new moon through a knot hole and I must beware of
the flute and the snare drum," said Mr. Biggs.

"Don't be alarmed by my daughter's fancies," Kelso advised. "They are
often rather astonishing. She has a hearty prejudice against the flute.
It is well founded. An ill played flute is one of the worst enemies of
law and order. Goldsmith estranged half his friends with a grim
determination to play the flute. It was the skeleton in his closet."

So Mr. Eliphalet Biggs met the pretty daughter of Jack Kelso. On his
way back to the tavern he told Ann that he had fallen in love with the
sweetest and prettiest girl in all the world--Bim Kelso. That very
evening Ann went over to Kelso's cabin to take the news to Bim and her
mother and to tell them that her father reckoned he belonged to a very
rich and a very grand family. Naturally, they felt a sense of elation,
although Mrs. Kelso, being a woman of shrewdness, was not carried away.
Mr. Kelso had gone to Offut's store and the three had the cabin to
themselves.

"I think he's just a wonderful man!" Bim exclaimed. "But I'm sorry his
name is so much like figs and pigs. I'm plum sure I'm going to love him."

"I thought you were in love with Harry Needles," Bim's mother said to
her.

"I am. But he keeps me so busy. I have to dress him up every day and put
a mustache on him and think up ever so many nice things for him to say,
and when he comes he doesn't say them. He's terribly young."

"The same age as you. I think he is a splendid boy--so does everybody."

"I have to make all his courage for him, and then he never will use it,"
Bim went on. "He has never said whether he likes my looks or not."

"But there's time enough for that--you are only a child," said her
mother. "You told me that he said once you were beautiful."

"But he has never said it twice, and when he did say it, I didn't believe
my ears, he spoke so low. Acted kind o' like he was scared of it. I don't
want to wait forever to be really and truly loved, do I?"

Mrs. Kelso laughed. "It's funny to hear a baby talking like that," she
said. "We don't know this young man. He's probably only fooling anyway."

Bim rose and stood very erect.

"Mother, do you think I look like a baby?" she asked. "I tell you I'm
every inch a woman," she added, mimicking her father in the speech of
Lear.

"But there are not many inches in you yet."

"How discouraging you are!" said Bim, sinking into her chair with a sigh.

Bim went often to the little tavern after that. Of those meetings little
is known, save that, with all the pretty arts of the cavalier, unknown to
Harry Needles, the handsome youth flattered and delighted the girl. This
went on day by day for a fortnight. The evening before Biggs was to leave
for his home, Bim went over to eat supper with Ann at the tavern.

It happened that Jack Kelso had found Abe sitting alone with his
Blackstone in Offut's store that afternoon.

"Mr. Kelso, did you ever hear what Eb Zane said about the general subject
of sons-in-law?" Abe asked.

"Never--but I reckon it would be wise and possibly apropos," said Kelso.

"He said that a son-in-law was a curious kind o' property," Abe began.
"'Ye know,' says Eb, 'if ye have a hoss that's tricky an' dangerous an'
wuth less than nothin', ye can give him away er kill him, but if ye have
a son-in-law that's wuthless, nobody else will have him an' it's ag'in'
the law to kill him. Fust ye know ye've got a critter on yer hands that
kicks an' won't work an' has to be fed an' liquored three times a day an'
is wuth a million dollars less than nothin'.'"

There was a moment of silence.

"When a man is figurin' his assets, it's better to add ten dollars than
to subtract a million," said Abe. "That's about as simple as adding up
the weight o' three small hogs."

"What a well of wisdom you are, Abe!" said Kelso. "Do you know anything
about this young Missourian who is shining up to Bim?"

"I only know that he was a drinking man up to the time he landed here and
that he threatened Traylor with his whip and got thrown against the side
of a barn--plenty hard. He's a kind of American king, and I don't like
kings. They're nice to look at, but generally those that have married 'em
have had one h--l of a time."

Kelso rose and went home to supper.

Soon after the supper dishes had been laid away in the Kelso cabin, young
Mr. Biggs rapped on its door and pulled the latch-string and entered and
sat down with Mr. and Mrs. Kelso at the fireside.

"I have come to ask for your daughter's hand," he said, as soon as they
were seated. "I know it will seem sudden, but she happens to be the girl
I want. I've had her picture in my heart always. I love your daughter. I
can give her a handsome home and everything she could desire."

Kelso answered promptly: "We are glad to welcome you here, but we can not
entertain such a proposal, flattering as it is. Our daughter is too young
to think of marriage. Then, sir, we know very little about you, and may I
be pardoned if I add that it does not recommend you?"

The young man was surprised. He had not expected such talk from a ladder
climber. He looked at Kelso, groping for an answer. Then--

"Perhaps not," said he. "I have been a little wild, but that is all in
the past. You can learn about me and my family from any one in St. Louis.
I am not ashamed of anything I have done."

"Nevertheless, I must ask you to back away from this subject. I can not
even discuss it with you."

"May I not hope that you will change your mind?"

"Not at present. Let the future take care of itself."

"I generally get what I want," said the young man.

"And now and then something that you don't want," said Kelso, a bit
nettled by his persistence.

"You ought to think of her happiness. She is too sweet and beautiful for
a home like this."

There was an awkward moment of silence. The young man said good night and
opened the door.

"I'll go with you," said Kelso.

He went with Mr. Biggs to the tavern and got his daughter and returned
home with her.

Mrs. Kelso chided her husband for being hard on Mr. Biggs.

"He has had his lesson, perhaps he will turn over a new leaf," she said.

"I fear there isn't a new leaf in his book," said Kelso. "They're all
dirty."

He told his wife what Abe had said in the store.

"The wisdom of the common folk is in that beardless young giant," he
said. "It is the wisdom of many generations gathered in the hard school
of bitter experience. I wonder where it is going to lead him."

As Eliphalet Biggs was going down the south road next morning he met Bim
on her pony near the schoolhouse, returning from the field with her cow.
They stopped.

"I'm coming back, little girl," he said.

"What for?" she asked.

"To tell you a secret and ask you a question. Nobody but you has the
right to say I can not. May I come?"

"I suppose you can--if you want to," she answered.

"I'll come and I'll write to you and send the letters to Ann."

Mentor Graham, who lived in the schoolhouse, had come out of its door.

"Good-by!" said young Mr. Biggs, as his heels touched the flanks of his
horse. Then he went flying down the road.




CHAPTER VIII

WHEREIN ABE MAKES SUNDRY WISE REMARKS TO THE BOY HARRY AND ANNOUNCES HIS
PURPOSE TO BE A CANDIDATE FOR THE LEGISLATURE AT KELSO'S DINNER PARTY.


Harry Needles met Bim Kelso on the road next day, when he was going down
to see if there was any mail. She was on her pony. He was in his new suit
of clothes--a butternut background striped into large checks.

"You look like a walking checkerboard," said she, stopping her pony.

"This--this is my new suit," Harry answered, looking down at it.

"It's a tiresome suit," said she impaciently. "I've been playing checkers
on it since I caught sight o' you, and I've got a man crowned in the king
row."

"I thought you'd like it," he answered, quite seriously, and with a look
of disappointment. "Say, I've got that razor and I've shaved three times
already."

He took the razor from his pocket and drew it from its case and proudly
held it up before her.

"Don't tell anybody," he warned her. "They'd laugh at me. They wouldn't
know how I feel."

"I won't say anything," she answered. "I reckon I ought to tell you that
I don't love you--not so much as I did anyway--not near so much. I only
love you just a wee little bit now."

It is curious that she should have said just that. Her former confession
had only been conveyed by the look in her eyes at sundry times and by
unpremeditated acts in the hour of his peril.

Harry's face fell.

"Do you--love--some other man?" he asked.

"Yes--a regular man--mustache, six feet tall and everything. I just tell
you he's purty!"

"Is it that rich feller from St. Louis?" he asked.

She nodded and then whispered: "Don't you tell."

The boy's lips trembled when he answered. "I won't tell. But I don't see
how you can do it."

"Why?"

"He drinks and he keeps slaves and beats them with a bull whip. He isn't
respectable."

"That's a lie," she answered quickly. "I don't care what you say."

Bim touched her pony with the whip and rode away.

Harry staggered for a moment as he went on. His eyes filled with tears.
It seemed to him that the world had been ruined. On his way to the
village he tried and convicted it of being no fit place for a boy to live
in. Down by the tavern he met Abe, who stopped him.

"Howdy, Harry!" said Abe. "You look kind o' sick. Come into the store and
sit down. I want to talk to you."

Harry followed the big man into Offut's store, flattered by his
attention. There had been something very grateful in the sound of Abe's
voice and the feel of his hand. The store was empty.

"You and I mustn't let ourselves be worried by little matters," said Abe,
as they sat down together by the fire. "Things that seem to you to be as
big as a mountain now will look like a mole hill in six months. You and I
have got things to do, partner. We mustn't let ourselves be fooled. I was
once in a boat with old Cap'n Chase on the Illinois River. We had got
into the rapids. It was a narrow channel in dangerous water. They had to
keep her headed just so or we'd have gone on the rocks. Suddenly a boy
dropped his apple overboard and began to holler. He wanted to have the
boat stopped. For a minute that boy thought his apple was the biggest
thing in the world. We're all a good deal like him. We keep dropping our
apples and calling for the boat to stop. Soon we find out that there are
many apples in the world as good as that one. You have all come to a
stretch of bad water up at your house. The folks have been sick. They're
a little lonesome and discouraged. Don't you make it any harder by crying
over a lost apple. Ye know it's possible that the apple will float along
down into the still water where you can pick it up by and by. The
important thing is to keep going ahead."

This bit of fatherly counsel was a help to the boy.

"I've got a book here that I want you to read," Abe went on. "It is the
_Life of Henry Clay_. Take it home and read it carefully and then bring
it back and tell me what you think of it. You may be a Henry Clay
yourself by and by. The world has something big in it for every one if he
can only find it. We're all searching--some for gold and some for fame. I
pray God every day that He will help me to find my work--the thing I can
do better than anything else--and when it is found help me to do it. I
expect it will be a hard and dangerous search and that I shall make
mistakes. I expect to drop some apples on my way. They'll look like gold
to me, but I'm not going to lose sight of the main purpose."

When Harry got home he found Sarah sewing by the fireside, with Joe and
Betsey playing by the bed. Samson had gone to the woods to split rails.

"Any mail?" Sarah asked.

"No mail," he answered.

Sarah went to the window and stood for some minutes looking out at the
plain. Its sere grasses, protruding out of the snow, hissed and bent in
the wind. In its cheerless winter colors it was a dreary thing to see.

"How I long for home!" she exclaimed, as she resumed her sewing by the
fire.

Little Joe came and stood by her knee and gave her his oft repeated
blessing:

"God help us and make His face to shine upon us."

She kissed him and said: "Dear comforter! It shines upon me every time
I hear you say those words."

The little lad had observed the effect of the blessing on his mother in
her moments of depression and many times his parroting had been the word
in season. Now he returned to his play again, satisfied.

"Would you mind if I called you mother?" Harry asked.

"I shall be glad to have you do it if it gives you any comfort, Harry,"
she answered.

She observed that there were tears in his eyes.

"We are all very fond of you," she said, as she bent to her task.

Then the boy told her the history of his morning--the talk with Bim, with
the razor omitted from it; how he had met Abe and all that Abe had said
to him as they sat together in the store.

"Well, Harry, if she's such a fool, you're lucky to have found it out so
soon," said Sarah. "She does little but ride the pony and play around
with a gun. I don't believe she ever spun a hank o' yarn in her life.
She'll get her teeth cut by and by. Abe is right We're always dropping
our apples and feeling very bad about it, until we find out that there
are lots of apples just as good. I'm that way myself. I guess I've made
it harder for Samson crying over lost apples. I'm going to try to stop
it."

Then fell a moment of silence. Soon she said:

"There's a bitter wind blowing and there's no great hurry about the
rails, I guess. You sit here by the fire and read your book this
forenoon. Maybe it will help you to find your work."

So it happened that the events of Harry's morning found their place in
the diary which Sarah and Samson kept. Long afterward Harry added the
sentences about the razor.

That evening Harry read aloud from the _Life of Henry Clay_, while Sarah
and Samson sat listening by the fireside. It was the first of many
evenings which they spent in a like fashion that winter. When the book
was finished they read, on Abe's recommendation, Weem's _Life of
Washington_.

Every other Sunday they went down to the schoolhouse to hear John Cameron
preach. He was a working man, noted for good common sense, who talked
simply and often effectively of the temptations of the frontier, notably
those of drinking, gaming and swearing. One evening they went to a debate
in the tavern on the issues of the day, in which Abe won the praise of
all for an able presentation of the claim of Internal Improvements.
During that evening Alexander Ferguson declared that he would not cut his
hair until Henry Clay became president, the news of which resolution led
to a like insanity in others and an age of unexampled hairiness on that
part of the border.

For Samson and Sarah the most notable social event of the winter was a
chicken dinner at which they and Mr. and Mrs. James Rutledge and Ann and
Abe Lincoln and Dr. Allen were the guests of the Kelsos. That night Harry
stayed at home with the children.

Kelso was in his best mood.

"Come," he said, when dinner was ready. "Life is more than friendship. It
is partly meat."

"And mostly Kelso," said Dr. Allen.

"Ah, Doctor! Long life has made you as smooth as an old shilling and
nimbler than a sixpence," Kelso declared. "And, speaking of life,
Aristotle said that the learned and the unlearned were as the living and
the dead."

"It is true," Abe interposed. "I say it, in spite of the fact that it
slays me."

"You? No! You are alive to your finger tips," Kelso answered.

"But I have mastered only eight books," said Abe.

"And one--the book of common sense, and that has wised you," Kelso
went on. "Since I came to this country I have learned to beware of the
one-book man. There are more living men in America than in any land I
have seen. The man who reads one good book thoughtfully is alive and
often my master in wit or wisdom. Reading is the gate and thought is
the pathway of real life."

"I think that most of the men I know have read the Bible," said Abe.

"A wonderful and a saving fact! It is a sure foundation to build your
life upon."

Kelso paused to pour whisky from a jug at his side for those who would
take it.

"Let us drink to our friend Abe and his new ambition," he proposed.

"What is it?" Samson asked.

"I am going to try for a seat in the Legislature," said Abe. "I reckon
it's rather bold. Old Samuel Legg was a good deal of a nuisance down in
Hardin County. He was always talking about going to Lexington, but never
went.

"'You'll never get thar without startin',' said his neighbor.

"'But I'm powerful skeered fer fear I'd never git back,' said Samuel.
'There's a big passel o' folks that gits killed in the city.'

"'You always was a selfish cuss. You ought to think o' yer neighbors,'
said the other man.

"So I've concluded that if I don't start I'll never get there, and if
I die on the way it will be a good thing for my neighbors," Abe added.

The toast was drunk, and by some in water, after which Abe said:

"If you have the patience to listen to it, I'd like to read my
declaration to the voters of Sangamon County."

Samson's diary briefly describes this appeal as follows:

       *       *       *       *       *

"He said that he wanted to win the confidence and esteem of his fellow
citizens. This he hoped to accomplish by doing something which would make
him worthy of it. He had been thinking of the county. A railroad would do
more for it than anything else, but a railroad would be too costly. The
improvement of the Sangamon River was the next best thing. Its channel
could be straightened and cleared of driftwood and made navigable for
small vessels under thirty tons' burden. He favored a usury law and said,
in view of the talk he had just heard, he was going to favor the
improvement and building of schools, so that every one could learn how to
read, at least, and learn for himself what is in the Bible and other
great books. It was a modest statement and we all liked it."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Whatever happens to the Sangamon, one statement in that platform
couldn't be improved," said Kelso.

"What is that?" Abe asked.

"It's the one that says you wish to win the regard of your fellows by
serving them."

"It's a lot better than saying that he wishes to serve Abe," said Dr.
Allen, a remark which referred to a former conversation with Abe, in
which Kelso had had a part.

"You can trust Abe to take the right turn at every fork in the road,"
Kelso went on. "If you stick to that, my boy, and continue to study,
you'll get there and away beyond any goal you may now see. A passion
for service is more than half the battle. Since the other night at the
tavern I've been thinking about Abe and the life we live here. I've
concluded that we're all very lucky, if we are a bit lonesome."

"I'd like to know about that," said Sarah. "I'm a little in need of
encouragement."

"Well, you may have observed that Abe has a good memory," he continued.
"While I try to be modest about it, my own memory is a fairly faithful
servant. It is due to the fact that since I left the university I have
live

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