“’Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying
   Where Hope clung feeding like a bee,
   Both were mine!  Life went a maying
   With Nature, Hope and Poesy
   When I was young!’

“Abe, have ye learned the Cotter’s Saturday Night?”

“Not yet.  It’s a heavy hog to hold but I’ll get a grip on an ear and a hind leg and lift it out o’ the pen before long.  You see.”

“Don’t fail to do that.  It will be a help and joy to ye.”

“Old Kirkham is a hard master,” said Abe.  “I hear his bell ringing every time I get a minute’s leisure.  I’m nigh through with him.  Now I want to study rhetoric.”

“Only schoolmasters study rhetoric,” Kelso declared.  “A real poet or a real orator is born with all the rhetoric he needs.  We should get our rhetoric as we get our oxygen—­unconsciously—­by reading the masters.  Rhetoric is a steed for a light load under the saddle but he’s too warm blooded for the harness.  He was for the day of the plumed knight—­not for these times.  No man of sense would use a prancing horse on a plow or a stone boat.  A good plow horse is a beautiful thing.  The play of his muscles, the power of his stride are poetry to me but when he tries to put on style he is ridiculous.  That suggests what rhetoric is apt to do to the untrained intellect.  If you’ve anything to say or write head straight across, the field and keep your eye on the furrow.  Then comes the sowing and how beautiful is the sower striding across the field in his suit of blue jeans, with that wonderful gesture, so graceful, so imperious!  Put him in a beaver hat and broadcloth and polished calfskin and a frilled shirt and you couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous!”

In the last diary of Samson Henry Traylor is this entry: 

* * * * *

“I went to Gettysburg with the President to-day and sat near him when he spoke.  Mr. Everett addressed the crowd for an hour or so.  As Kelso would say ‘He rode the prancing steed of Rhetoric.’  My old friend went straight across the field and his look and gestures reminded me of that picture of the sower which Jack gave us one night long ago in Abe’s store.  Through my tears I could see the bucket hanging on his elbow and the good seed flying far and wide from his great hand.  When he finished the field, plowed and harrowed and fertilized by war, had been sowed for all time.  The spring’s work was done and well done.”

* * * * *

At a quarter of ten the Doctor rose and said: 

“We’re keeping Abe from his sleep and wearing the night away with philosophy.  I’m going home.”

“I came over to see if you could find a man to help me to-morrow,” Samson said to Abe.  “Harry is going over to do the chinking alone.  I want a man to help me on the whipsaw while I cut some boards for the upper flooring.”

“I’ll help you myself,” Abe proposed.  “I reckon I’ll close the store to-morrow unless Jack will tend it.”