IT IS THE DEED, NOT THE DOER.
By one of those unaccountable contradictions which disturb one's calculations upon women's conduct, the fair sex "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 proneness 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 entitled 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 He was answered that his business would be attended to, as soon as the offended ladies had withdrawn.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.)