"No; you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off all, until he was safe over.
"The government [Footnote: Lincoln always used "Government" and "U. S." as nouns carrying a plural verb.] are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Don't pester them! Keep silence, and we will get you safe across."
THE PIONEER'S LAND-TITLE.
Judge Weldon was appointed United States attorney, acting in Illinois. Being at Washington, some speculators, knowing he was an old friend of the President, engaged him for their side. They wanted to get cotton permits from the treasury, which was feasible, but made sure that the military would recognize these passes--no doubt, if the President would countersign them. Otherwise the army officers acted often without regard to trade desires. On broaching the subject to the potentate on whose lips so much hung at the epoch, the latter brightened up and, in his branching-off manner, said:
"By the way, what has become of your friend Robert Lewis?"
Lewis was the clerk of the court in Illinois, and at home, well and thrifty.
"Do you remember," continued the President, "his story about his going to Missouri to look up some Mormon lands belonging to his father?"
Whereupon, as Weldon said that he had forgot some details, the story-teller related with unction:
"This Robert Lewis, on coming of age, found papers in his father's muniments, entitling him as heir to lands in northeastern Missouri, where the Mormons had attempted settling before their enforced exodus. There was no railroad, so Lewis rode out to that part and thought he had located the land. For the night he stopped at a solitary log house. A gruff voice bade him come in, not very hospitably. The owner was a long, lanky man about eleven feet high, 'Bob' thought. He had a rifle hanging on its hooks over the fireplace, also about eleven feet long, Bob also reckoned. He was interrupted in 'necking' bullets, for they were cast in a mold and left a little protuberance where the run left off.
"This first comer had been there some time and seemed to know the section, but was rather indifferent to the stranger's inquiries about the site of his lands. Teased at this unconcern, so opposite to the usual feeling of settlers who like a neighbor in the lonesomeness, Lewis hastened to lay down the law: