"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