A Man for the Ages Part 20

"Ah, Doctor! Long life has made you as smooth as an old s.h.i.+lling and nimbler than a sixpence," Kelso declared. "And, speaking of life, Aristotle said that the learned and the unlearned were as the living and the dead."

"It is true," Abe interposed. "I say it, in spite of the fact that it slays me."

"You? No! You are alive to your finger tips," Kelso answered.

"But I have mastered only eight books," said Abe.

"And one--the book of common sense, and that has wised you," Kelso went on. "Since I came to this country I have learned to beware of the one-book man. There are more living men in America than in any land I have seen. The man who reads one good book thoughtfully is alive and often my master in wit or wisdom. Reading is the gate and thought is the pathway of real life."

"I think that most of the men I know have read the Bible," said Abe.

"A wonderful and a saving fact! It is a sure foundation to build your life upon."

Kelso paused to pour whisky from a jug at his side for those who would take it.

"Let us drink to our friend Abe and his new ambition," he proposed.

"What is it?" Samson asked.

"I am going to try for a seat in the Legislature," said Abe. "I reckon it's rather bold. Old Samuel Legg was a good deal of a nuisance down in Hardin County. He was always talking about going to Lexington, but never went.

"'You'll never get thar without startin',' said his neighbor.

"'But I'm powerful skeered fer fear I'd never git back,' said Samuel.

'There's a big pa.s.sel o' folks that gits killed in the city.'

"'You always was a selfish cuss. You ought to think o' yer neighbors,'

said the other man.

"So I've concluded that if I don't start I'll never get there, and if I die on the way it will be a good thing for my neighbors," Abe added.

The toast was drunk, and by some in water, after which Abe said:

"If you have the patience to listen to it, I'd like to read my declaration to the voters of Sangamon County."

Samson's diary briefly describes this appeal as follows:

"He said that he wanted to win the confidence and esteem of his fellow citizens. This he hoped to accomplish by doing something which would make him worthy of it. He had been thinking of the county. A railroad would do more for it than anything else, but a railroad would be too costly. The improvement of the Sangamon River was the next best thing. Its channel could be straightened and cleared of driftwood and made navigable for small vessels under thirty tons' burden. He favored a usury law and said, in view of the talk he had just heard, he was going to favor the improvement and building of schools, so that every one could learn how to read, at least, and learn for himself what is in the Bible and other great books. It was a modest statement and we all liked it."

"Whatever happens to the Sangamon, one statement in that platform couldn't be improved," said Kelso.

"What is that?" Abe asked.

"It's the one that says you wish to win the regard of your fellows by serving them."

"It's a lot better than saying that he wishes to serve Abe," said Dr.

Allen, a remark which referred to a former conversation with Abe, in which Kelso had had a part.

"You can trust Abe to take the right turn at every fork in the road,"

Kelso went on. "If you stick to that, my boy, and continue to study, you'll get there and away beyond any goal you may now see. A pa.s.sion for service is more than half the battle. Since the other night at the tavern I've been thinking about Abe and the life we live here. I've concluded that we're all very lucky, if we are a bit lonesome."

"I'd like to know about that," said Sarah. "I'm a little in need of encouragement."

"Well, you may have observed that Abe has a good memory," he continued.

"While I try to be modest about it, my own memory is a fairly faithful servant. It is due to the fact that since I left the university I have lived, mostly, in lonely places. It is a great thing to be where the register of your mind is not overburdened by the flow of facts. Abe's candidacy is the only thing that has happened here since Samson's raising, except the arrival and departure of Eliphalet Biggs. Our memories are not weakened by overwork. They have time for big undertakings--like Burns and Shakespeare and Blackstone."

"I've noticed that facts get kind o' slippery when they come in a bunch, as they did on our journey," said Samson. "Seems so they wore each other smooth and got hard to hold."

"Ransom Prigg used to say it was easy enough to ketch eels, but it was powerful hard to hold 'em," Abe remarked. "He caught three eels in a trap one day and the trap busted and let 'em loose in the boat. He kept grabbin' and tusslin' around the boat till the last eel got away. 'I never had such a slippery time in all the days o' my life,' said Rans.

'One eel is a dinner, but three eels is jest a lot o' slippin' an'

disapp'intment.'"

"That's exactly the point I make," said Kelso. "A man with too many eels in the boat will have none for dinner. The city man is at a great disadvantage. Events slip away from him and leave nothing. His intellect gets the habit of letting go. It loses its power to seize and hold. His impressions are like footprints on a beach. They are washed away by the next tide."

There was much talk at the fireside after dinner, all of which doubtless had an effect on the fortunes of the good people who sat around it, and the historian must sort the straws, and with some regret, for bigger things are drawing near in the current. Samson and Sarah had been telling of their adventures on the long road.

"We are all movers," said Kelso. "We can not stay where we are for a single day--not if we are alive. Most of us never reach that eminence from which we discover the littleness of ourselves and our troubles and achievements and the immensities of power and wisdom by which we are surrounded."

At least one of that company was to remember the words in days of adversity and triumph. Soon after that dinner the memories of the little community began to register an unusual procession of thrilling facts.

Early in April an Indian scare spread from the capital to the remotest corners of the state. Black Hawk, with many warriors, had crossed the Mississippi and was moving toward the Rock River country. Governor Reynolds called for volunteers to check the invasion.

Abe, whose address to the voters had been printed in the _Sangamon Journal_, joined a volunteer company and soon became its captain. On the tenth of April he and Harry Needles left for Richland to go into training. Samson was eager to go, but could not leave his family.

Bim Kelso rode out into the fields where Harry was at work the day before he went away.

"This is a great surprise," said Harry. "I don't see you any more except at a distance."

"I don't see you either."

"I didn't think you wanted to see me."

"You're easily discouraged," she said, looking down with a serious face.

"You made me feel as if I didn't want to live any longer."

"I reckon I'm mean. I made myself feel a million times worse. It's awful to be such a human as I am. Some days I'm plum scared o' myself."

"I'm going away," the boy said, in a rather mournful tone.

"I hate to have you go. I just love to know you're here, if I don't see you. Only I wish you was older and knew more."

"Maybe I know more'n you think I do," he answered.