"How are you gettin' along?"
"Rather slow," Samson answered. "It's hard to get our stuff to market down in the Sangamon country. Our river isn't navigable yet. We hope that Abe Lincoln, who has just been elected to the Legislature, will be able to get it widened and straightened and cleaned up so it will be of some use to us down there."
"I've heard of him. They call him Honest Abe, don't they?"
"Yes; and he is honest if a man ever was."
"That's the kind we need to make our laws," said Mrs. Brimstead. "There are not many men who get a reputation for honesty. It ought to be easy, but it isn't."
"Men are pretty good in the main," said Samson. "But ye know there are not so many who can exactly toe the mark. They don't know how or they're too busy or something. I guess I'm a little careless, and I don't believe I'm a bad fellow either. Abe's conscience don't ever sit down to rest. He traveled three miles one night to give back four cents that he had overcharged a customer. I'd probably have waited to have her come back, and by that time it might have slipped my mind or maybe she would have moved away. I suppose that in handling dollars we're mostly as honest as Abe, but we're apt to be a little careless with the cents. Abe toed the penny mark, and that's how he got his reputation. The good God has given him a sense of justice that is like a chemist's balance. It can weigh down to a fraction of a grain. Now he don't care much about pennies. He can be pretty reckless with 'em. But when they're a measure on the balance, he counts 'em careful, I can tell ye."
"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead. "Honesty is like Sapington's pills. There's nothing that's so well recommended. It has a great many friends. But Honesty has to pay prompt. We don't trust it long. It has poor credit. When we have to give a dollar's worth of work to correct an error of four cents, we're apt to decide that Honesty don't pay. But that's when it pays best. We've heard the jingle o' them four cents 'way up here in Tazewell County, an' long before you told us. They say he's a smart talker an' that he can split ye wide open laughin'."
"He's a great story-teller, but that's a small part of him," said Samson. "He's a kind of a four horse team. He knows more than any man I ever saw and can tell it and he can wrestle like old Satan and swing a scythe or an axe all day an' mighty supple. He's one of us common folks and don't pretend to be a bit better. He is, though, and we know it, but I don't think he knows it."
"Say, there ain't many of us smart enough to keep that little piece of ignorance in our heads," said Brimstead. "It's worth a fortune, now—ain't it?"
"Is he going to marry the Rutledge girl?" was the query of Mrs. Brimstead.