in a dress of red muslin trimmed with white lace. Ann Rutledge also wore
a red dress and came with Abe. The latter was rather grotesque in his new
linsey trousers, of a better length than the former pair, but still too
short.

"It isn't fair to blame the trousers or the tailor," he had said when he
had tried them on. "My legs are so long that the imagination of the
tailor is sure to fall short if the cloth don't. Next time I'll have 'em
made to measure with a ten-foot pole instead of a yardstick. If they're
too long I can roll 'em up and let out a link or two when they shrink.
Ever since I was a boy I have been troubled with shrinking pants."

Abe wore a blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons, the tails of which
were so short as to be well above the danger of pressure when he sat
down. His cowhide shoes had been well blackened; the blue yarn of his
socks showed above them. "These darned socks of mine are rather proud and
conceited," he used to say. "They like to show off."

He wore a shirt of white, unbleached cotton, a starched collar and black
tie.

In speaking of his collar to Samson, he said that he felt like a wild
horse in a box stall.

Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, was there--a smooth-faced man with a
large head, sandy hair and a small mustache, who spoke by note, as it
were. Kelso called him the great articulator and said that he walked in
the valley of the shadow of Lindley Murray. He seemed to keep a watchful
eye on his words, as if they were a lot of schoolboys not to be trusted.
They came out with a kind of self-conscious rectitude.

The children's games had begun and the little house rang with their songs
and laughter, while their elders sat by the fire and along the walls
talking. Ann Rutledge and Bim Kelso and Harry Needles and John McNeil
played with them. In one of the dances all joined in singing the verses:

I won't have none o' yer' weevily wheat,
I won't have none o' yer barley;
I won't have none o' yer' weevily wheat,
To make a cake for Charley.

Charley is a fine young man,
Charley is a dandy,
Charley likes to kiss the girls,
Whenever it comes handy.

When a victim was caught in the flying scrimmage at the end of a passage
in the game of Prisoners, he or she was brought before a blindfolded
judge:

"Heavy, heavy hangs over your head," said the Constable.

"Fine or superfine?" the judge inquired.

"Fine," said the Constable, which meant that the vict