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A long, slim, stoop-shouldered young man sat in the shade of an oak tree that stood near a corner of the tavern, with a number of children playing around him. He had sat leaning against the tree trunk reading a book. He had risen as they came near and stood looking at them, with the book under his arm. . . .

He wore a hickory shirt without a collar or coat or jacket. One suspender held up his coarse, linsey trousers, the legs of which fitted closely and came only to a blue yarn zone above his heavy cowhide shoes. Samson writes that he “fetched a sneeze and wiped his big nose with a red handkerchief” as he stood surveying them in silence, while Dr. John Allen, who had sat on the doorstep reading a paper–a kindly-faced man of middle age with a short white beard under his chin–greeted them cheerfully.

The withering sunlight of a day late in August fell upon the dusty street, now almost deserted. Faces at the doors and windows of the little houses were looking out at them. Two ragged boys and a ginger-colored dog came running toward the wagon. The latter and Sambo surveyed each other with raised hair and began scratching the earth, straight-legged, whining meanwhile, and in a moment began to play together. A man in blue jeans who sat on the veranda of a store opposite, leaning against its wall, stopped whittling and shut his jacknife.

“Where do ye hail from?” the Doctor asked.

“Vermont,” said Samson.

“All the way in that wagon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I guess you’re made o’ the right stuff,” said the Doctor. “Where ye bound?”

“Don’t know exactly. Going to take up a claim somewhere.”

“There’s no better country than right here. This is the Canaan of America. We need people like you. Unhitch your team and have some dinner and we’ll talk things over after you’re rested. I’m the doctor here and I ride all over this part o’ the country. I reckon I know it pretty well.”

A woman in a neat calico dress came out of the door–a strong built and rather well favored woman with blond hair and dark eyes.

“Mrs. Rutledge, these are travelers from the East,” said the Doctor. “Give ’em some dinner, and if they can’t pay for it, I can. They’ve come all the way from Vermont.”

“Good land! Come right in an’ rest yerselves. Abe, you show the gentleman where to put his horses an’ lend him a hand.”

Abe extended his long arm toward Samson and said “Howdy” as they shook hands.

“When his big hand got hold of mine, I kind of felt his timber,” Samson writes. “I says to myself, ‘There’s a man it would be hard to tip over in a rassle.'”

“What’s yer name? How long ye been travelin’? My conscience! Ain’t ye wore out?” the hospitable Mrs. Rutledge was asking as she went into the house with Sarah and the children. “You go and mix up with the little ones and let yer mother rest while I git dinner,” she said to Joe and Betsey, and added as she took Sarah’s shawl and bonnet: “You lop down an’ rest yerself while I’m flyin’ around the fire.”

“Come all the way from Vermont?” Abe asked as he and Samson were unhitching.

“Yes, sir.”

“By jing!” the slim giant exclaimed. “I reckon you feel like throwin’ off yer harness an’ takin’ a roll in the grass.”

* * * * *

The tavern was the only house in New Salem with stairs in it. Stairs so steep, as Samson writes, that “they were first cousins to the ladder.” There were four small rooms above them. Two of these were parted by a partition of cloth hanging from the rafters. In each was a bed and bedstead and smaller beds on the floor. In case there were a number of adult guests the bedstead was screened with sheets hung upon strings.

In one of these rooms the travelers had a night of refreshing sleep.