Part 3 (2/2)

When Abraham Lincoln was a poor young lawyer from Springfield, attending the perambulatory court down at Lewiston, Illinois, he found the place crowded by a Methodist meeting as well as the court having an attractive case to try. He was obliged--because of exclusion from the inn--to put up at the sheriff's house. Mrs. Davidson herself could only offer him shares with Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, also a rising man, and Peter Cartwright, the noted preacher--on the floor, but on a feather bed. At that period the wild goose flew low. It may be supposed that the student of Shakespeare might quote ”When shall we three meet again?” on rising between the famous border worthies in the dawn. The hospitality was so refres.h.i.+ng that the trio spent the next night there. They sat up by the large fireside, capping stories.

The enmity of lawyers, and even of politicians, is but skin-deep, and Steve and Abe clashed not at all to meet the minister's reproof.

Lincoln rocked while story-telling in a cane-bottomed chair, taken from the steamboat celebrated in Spoon River annals as its first navigator. Lincoln was the more interested, as he had been boatman and pilot on his river, the Sangamon. In the 1820's, this toy boat, the _Utility_, struggled into the high water of Spoon River. It is a tributary of the Illinois. Now, though the county is named Fulton, none of the inhabitants knew anything about the inventor of steam navigation, and doubted that a steamboat existed near them. Hence the snorting, puffing, and clangor of the vessel as she surged against the freshet, alarmed all the population in hearing when she ascended the virgin Spoon.

One Sam Jenkins had been on a spree for a week, and even he was roused by the tremendous sound. As he rushed from his cabin, by the terrific blaze from the high smoke-stack and the furnace burning pitch-pine, he sank onto his shaking knees and yelled:

”Boys, I have got 'em for the third time! It is all up with me!”

THE WHISTLE THAT STOPPED THE BOAT.

Lincoln was pitted, as a lawyer, against a brother of the toga who was of fat and plethoric habit, and who puffed and blowed when most he wished to get on with his speech. The wag said:

”The gentleman reminds me of a little steamboat I knew about on the Spoon River. She had been equipped with a whistle disproportionate to her capacity of steam-power, and every time she blew off it stopped the boat!”

IT IS THE DEED, NOT THE DOER.

By one of those unaccountable contradictions which disturb one's calculations upon women's conduct, the fair s.e.x ”took to” him with extraordinary kindness, though he always remained shy in their presence. This favor on their part was fortified by his striking honesty in little points which the close-seeing feminine eye never misses. To cap the climax he defended the purity of social order with a rarity in those quarters sufficient to single him out. Not that the roughest Westerner was not excessively gallant, but his restrictions in the ladies' presence did not always curb his p.r.o.neness to ”tall talk.”

Once in the way, a loafer hanging about in the store, and having paid only attention to the dram counter, the necessary concomitant of the village center, became garrulous, but unfortunately more than seasoned the flow with a profanity tolerably rich in variety if not distinguished for refinement; he was of the Clary's Grove _genus_. As there was a crowd at the ”ladies' department,” that is, the dry-goods and finery, where it happened Lincoln was commonly besieged, the language was resented by woman's weapons--tosses of the head, affected deafness, glances into the future, and so on, but the clerk resented it in another way. He bade him be silent.

Now, the fellow thought, with his kind, that he was ent.i.tled to exhale the breath which was strengthened by the strong waters vended here, and expressed himself more foully than before.

He had a resentment against the clod rising to be a flower of courtesy, and here was his opportunity to satisfy the grudge, and before an audience timid and not apt to intervene.

Singularly, the men who most despise women are the ones who seek to have her applause. He wished to see the man who would stop him from uttering his sentiments. He was answered that his business would be attended to, as soon as the offended ladies had withdrawn.

The undesired witnesses took the hint and quitted the store. Thereupon the long-limbed clerk verified the taunt of ”counter-jumper” by clearing it at a bound. ”Will you engage not to repeat that rowdy (blackguard) talk in the store while I am the master, and leave instanter?”

The bully protested in a torrent of unrepeatable words.

”I see,” said the champion of decency, ”you want a whipping, and _I_ may as well give it you as any other man.”

And he forthwith administered the correction; not only did he drag him outdoors, but laid him out so senseless that nothing less than the border finish of a knock-down and drag-out encounter--the rubbing the conquered man's eyes with smart-weed--revived him to beg for mercy, and a drink. The victor allowed him to rise, converted his appeal into mockery by offering plain water, which the brute applied solely to his doubly inflamed eyes, and sent him away in tears. But the shock had a reparative effect; he became a good neighbor, and a convert to temperance.

(This or a similar lesson to the village bully is testified to by an eye-witness of Sangamon, but resident of Viroqua, Wisconsin; his name is John White. He worked at chopping rails with the rail-splitter on more than one job.)

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