"I ain't sayin' but what there is purtier men," she said, reflectively, as she stuck her finger into the knot hole and felt its edges. "I ain't sayin' but what there is smarter men but I do say that the name o' Bony ain't hardly fit to be heard in company."
"A little whitewash wouldn't hurt it any," said Abe. "I'd gladly give him my title of Captain if I could unhitch it someway."
"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 title 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.