Connecticut western news., 1922-06-08


 in September, Bowlin Green was going around the pasture to put his fence in repair, when he came upon young MT. Lincoln. The latter sat in the shade of a tree on the hillside. He. looked terribly peaked" as Uncle Bowlin has said in a letter.
 "Why, Abe, where have you been?" he asked "The whole village is scared Samson Traylor was here last night lookin' for ye."
 "Pm like a deer that's been hurt," said the young man. "I took to the woods. Wanted to be alone. You see, I had lot of thinking to do-the kind of thinking that every man must do for himself. I've got the brush cleared away, at last, so can see through. l had made up my mind to go down to your house for the night and was try ing to decide whether I have energy enough to do it."
 Come on; it's only a short step," urged the big-hearted Bowlin.
 "What I feel the need of, just now, Is a week or two of sleep" said MT. Lincoln, as he rose and started down the long hill with his friend.
 Some time later Bowlin Green gave Samson this brief account of what happened in and about the cabin:
 "He wouldn't eat anything. He wanted to go down to the river for a dip, and I went with him. When we got back, induced him to take off his clothes and get into bed. He was fast asleep in ten minutes. When night came went up the ladder to bed. He was still asleep when came down in the morning. I went out and did my chores. Then I cut two venison steaks, each about the size O my hand, and half moon of bacon. I pounded the venison to pulp with little salt and bacon mixed in. I put it on the broiler and over a bed O hickory coals. got the coffee into the pot and up next to the fire and some potatoes in the ashes. pasted a bird with bacon strips and put it into the roaster and set it back O the broiling bed. Then made some biscuits and put 'em into the oven. I tell you, in a little while the smell O that fireplace would have woke the dead-honestl Abe began to stir. In a minute heard him call:
 't'Say, Uncle Bowlin, I'm goin' to get up an eat you out O house and home. I'm hungry and I feel like new man. What time is itP 4
 It'll be nine o'clock by the time you're washed and dressed says.
 "'Well, I declare says he, I've had about sixteen hours O solid sleep. The world looks better to me this morn ing
 "At the table told him story and got a little laugh out of him. He stayed with me three weeks, choring around the place and taking 1t easy. He read all the books had, until you and Doc Allen came with the law books. Then he pitched into them. I think he has changed good deal since Ann died. He talks lot about God and the hereafter"
 In October young Mir. Lincoln re- turned to his surveying, and in the last month of the year to Vandalia for an extra session of the legislature, where he took a, stand against the con- vention system of nominating candi- dates for public office. Samson went 10 Vandaia for visit with him and to see the place before the session end ed. The next year, in a letter to his brother, he Nays: .# / .- ...
 "Vandalia is small, crude village. It has strong flavor of whisky, pro- fanity and tobacco. The night after I got there l went to banquet with Abe Lincoln. Heard lot about the dam nigger-1oving Yankees who were trying to ruin the state and country with abolition. There were some stories like those we used to hear in the lumber camp, and no end of pow erful talk, in which the names of God and the Savior were roughly handled. A few of the statesmen got drunk, and after the dinner was over two of them jumped on the table and danced down the whole length of it, shattering glasses. Nobody seemed to be able to stop them. hear that they had to pay several hundred dollars for the damage done. You will be apt to think that there is too much liberty here in the West, and perhaps that is so, but the fact is these men are not half so bad as they seem to be. Lincoln tells me that they are honest, almost to man, and sincerely devoted to the pub lie good as they see it. asked Abe Lincoln, who all his life has associated with rough-tongued, drinking men, how he managed to hold his own course and keep his talk and habits so clean. -..r h Why, the fact is,' said he, I have associated with the people who lived around me only part of the time, but have never stopped associating with myself and with Washington and Clay and Webster and Shakespeare and Burns and DeFoe and Scott and Blackstone and Parsons. On the whole, I've been in pretty good com pany.'
 He has not yet accomplished much