When Lincoln Licked A Bully
by
In “A Man For the Ages” Irving Bacheller tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s life and career in the form of a novel. He represents that the book is written by the grandson of one Samson Traylor, who is presented as a friend of Lincoln’s. The story that follows is an abbreviation of the account of the journey of Samson Traylor and his wife and two children and their dog, Sambo, in 1831, from Vergennes, Vermont, to the Illinois country; and the part “Abe” Lincoln, a clerk in Denton Offut’s store at New Salem, had in building a log cabin for them upon their arrival there; and concludes by telling how Lincoln licked a bully.–THE EDITOR.
IN the early summer of 1831 Samson Traylor and his wife, Sarah, and two children left their old home near the village of Vergennes, Vermont, and began their travels toward the setting sun with four chairs, a bread board and rolling-pin, a feather bed and blankets, a small looking-glass, a skillet, an ax, a pack basket with a pad of sole leather on the same, a water pail, a box of dishes, a tub of salt pork, a rifle, a teapot, a sack of meal, sundry small provisions and a violin, in a double wagon drawn by oxen. . . . A young black shepherd dog with tawny points and the name of Sambo followed the wagon or explored the fields and woods it passed.
The boy Josiah–familiarly called Joe–sits beside his mother. He is a slender, sweet-faced boy. He is looking up wistfully at his mother. The little girl Betsey sits between him and her father.
That evening they stopped at the house of an old friend some miles up the dusty road to the north.
“Here we are–goin’ west,” Samson shouted to the man at the doorstep.
He alighted and helped his family out of the wagon.
“You go right in–I’ll take care o’ the oxen,” said the man.
Samson started for the house with the girl under one arm and the boy under the other. A pleasant-faced woman greeted them with a hearty welcome at the door.
“You poor man! Come right in,” she said.
“Poor! I’m the richest man in the world,” said he. “Look at the gold on that girl’s head–curly, fine gold, too–the best there is. She’s Betsey–my little toy woman–half past seven years old–blue eyes–helps her mother get tired every day. Here’s my toy man Josiah–yes, brown hair and brown eyes like Sarah–heart o’ gold–helps his mother, too–six times one year old.”
“What pretty faces!” said the woman as she stooped and kissed them.
“Yes, ma’am. Got ’em from the fairies,” Samson went on. “They have all kinds o’ heads for little folks, an’ I guess they color ’em up with the blood o’ roses an’ the gold o’ buttercups an’ the blue o’ violets. Here’s this wife o’ mine. She’s richer’n I am. She owns all of us. We’re her slaves.”
“Looks as young as she did the day she was married–nine years ago,” said the woman.
“Exactly!” Samson exclaimed. “Straight as an arrow and proud! I don’t blame her. She’s got enough to make her proud I say. I fall in love again every time I look into her big brown eyes.”
The talk and laughter brought the dog into the house.
“There’s Sambo, our camp follower,” said Samson. “He likes us, one and all, but he often feels sorry for us because we cannot feel the joy that lies in buried bones and the smell of a liberty pole or a gate post.”
They had a joyous evening and a restful night with these old friends and resumed their journey soon after daylight. They ferried across the lake at Burlington and fared away over the mountains and through the deep forest on the Chateaugay trail. . . .
They had read a little book called The Country of the Sangamon. The latter was a word of the Pottawatomies meaning “land of plenty.” It was the name of a river in Illinois draining “boundless, flowery meadows of unexampled beauty and fertility, belted with timber, blessed with shady groves, covered with game and mostly level, without a stick or a stone to vex the plowman.” Thither they were bound to take up a section of government land.