A Man for the Ages Part 30

"Colonel is a more grander name," she insisted. "I call it plum coralapus."

She had thus expressed her notion of the limit of human grandeur.

"Do you like it better than Judge?"

"Wall, Judge has a good sound to it but I'm plum sot on Colonel. If you kin give that name to a horse, which Samson Traylor has done it, I don't see why a man shouldn't be treated just as well."

"I'll see what can be done but if he gets that t.i.tle he'll have to live up to it."

"I'll make him walk a chalk line--you see," the good woman promised as she left the store.

That evening Abe wrote a playful commission as Colonel for Peter Lukins which was signed in due time by all his friends and neighbors and presented to Lukins by a committee of which Abe was chairman.

Coleman Smoot--a man of some means who had a farm on the road to Springfield--was in the village that evening. Abe showed him the commission and asked him to sign it.

"I'll sign it on one condition," said Smoot.

"What is that?" Abe asked.

"That you'll give me a commission."

"A man like you can't expect too much. Would you care to be a General?"

"I wouldn't give the snap of my finger for that. What I want to be is your friend."

"You are that now, aren't you?" Abe asked.

"Yes, but I haven't earned my commission. You haven't given me a chance yet. What can I do to help you along?"

Abe was much impressed by these kindly words. "My friends do not often ask what they can do for me," he said. "I suppose they haven't thought of it. I'll think it over and let you know."

Three days later he walked out to Coleman Smoot's after supper. As they sat together by the fireside Abe said:

"I've been thinking of your friendly question. It's dangerous to talk that way to a man like me. The fact is I need two hundred dollars to pay pressing debts and give me something in my pocket when I go to Vandalia.

If you can not lend it to me I shall think none the less of you."

"I can and will," said Smoot. "I've been watching you for a long time.

A man who tries as hard as you do to get along deserves to be helped. I believe in you. I'll go up to Springfield and get the money and bring it to you within a week or so."

Abe Lincoln had many friends who would have done the like for him if they could, and he knew it.

"Every one has faith in you," said Smoot. "We expect much of you and we ought to be willing to do what we can to help."

"Your faith will be my strength if I have any," said Abe.

On his way home that night he thought of what Jack Kelso had said of democracy and friends.h.i.+p.

On the twenty-second of November a letter came to Ann from Bim Kelso which announced that she was going to New Orleans for the winter with her husband. Thereupon Abe gave up the idea of going to St. Louis and six days later took the stage for the capital, at Rutledge's door, where all the inhabitants of the village had a.s.sembled to bid him good-by. Ann Rutledge with a flash of her old playfulness kissed him when he got into the stage. Abe's long arm was waving in the air as he looked back at his cheering friends while the stage rumbled down the road toward the great task of his life upon which he was presently to begin in the little village of Vandalia.

CHAPTER 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.

Early in the autumn of that year the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy of Alton had spent a night with the Traylors on his way to the North. Sitting by the fireside he had told many a vivid tale of the cruelties of slavery.

"I would not have you think that all slave-holders are wicked and heartless," he said. "They are like other men the world over. Some are kind and indulgent. If all men were like them, slavery could be tolerated. But they are not. Some men are brutal in the North as well as in the South. If not made so by nature they are made so by drink. To give them the power of life and death over human beings, which they seem to have in parts of the South, is a crime against G.o.d and civilization. Our country can not live and prosper with such a serpent in its bosom. No good man should rest until the serpent is slain."

"I agree with you," said Samson.

"I knew that you would," the minister went on. "We have already had some help from you but we need more. I take it as a duty which G.o.d has laid upon me to help every fugitive that reaches my door. Thousands of New Englanders have come into Illinois in the last year. They will help the good work of mercy and grace. If you hear three taps upon your window after dark or the hoot of an owl in your dooryard you will know what it means. Fix some place on your farm where these poor people who are seeking the freedom which G.o.d wills for all His children, may find rest and refreshment and security until they have strength to go on."

Within a week after the visit of Mr. Lovejoy, Samson and Harry built a hollow haystack about half-way from the house to the barn. The stack had a comfortable room inside of it about eight feet by seven and some six feet in height. Its entrance was an opening near the bottom of the stack well screened by the pendant hay. But no fugitive came to occupy it that winter.

Early in March Abe wrote a letter to Samson in which he said:

"I have not been doing much. I have been getting the hang of things.

There are so many able men here that I feel like being modest for a while. It's good practice if it is a little hard on me. Here are such men as Theodore Ford, William L. D. Ewing, Stephen T. Logan, Jesse K. Dubois and Governor Duncan. You can not wonder that I feel like lying low until I can see my way a little more clearly. I have met here a young man from your state of the name of Stephen A. Douglas. He is twenty-one years old and about the least man I ever saw to look at but he is bright and very ambitious. He has taught school and studied law and been admitted to the bar and is bristling up to John J. Hardin in a contest for the office of State's Attorney. Some pumpkins for a boy of twenty-one I reckon. No chance for internal improvements this session. Money is plenty and next year I think we can begin harping on that string. More than ever I am convinced that it is no time for anti-slavery agitation much as we may feel inclined to it. There's too much fire under the pot now."

Soon after the new year of 1835 Samson and Harry moved the Kelsos to Tazewell County. Mr. Kelso had received an appointment as Land Agent and was to be stationed at the little settlement of Hopedale near the home of John Peasley.

"I hate to be taking you so far away," said Samson.

"Hush, man," said Kelso. "It's a thing to be thought about only in the still o' the night."

"I shall be lonesome."

"But we live close by the wells of wisdom and so shall not be comfortless."

Late in the afternoon Harry and Samson left the Kelsos and their effects at a small frame house in the little village of Hopedale. The men had no sooner begun to unload than its inhabitants came to welcome the newcomers and help them in the work of getting settled. When the goods were deposited in The dooryard Samson and Harry drove to John Peasley's farm.

Mr. Peasley recognized the big, broad-shouldered Vermonter at the first look.

"Do I remember you?" he said. "Well, I guess I do. So does my barn door.

Let me take hold of that right hand of yours again. Yes, sir. It's the same old iron hand. Many Ann!" he called as his wife came out of the door. "Here's the big man from Vergennes who tossed the purty slaver."

"I see it is," she answered. "Ain't ye comin' in?"

"We've been moving a man to Hopedale and shall have to spend the night somewhere in this neighborhood," said Samson. "Our horses are played out."

"If you try to pa.s.s this place I'll have ye took up," said Peasley.

"There's plenty of food in the house an' stable."