“Sometimes I think that comely dress ought to go with comely diction,” said Abe.  “But that’s a thing you can’t learn in books.  There’s no grammarian of the language of dress.  Then I’m so big and awkward.  It’s a rather hopeless problem.”

“You’re in good company,” Kelso assured him.  “Nature guards her best men with some sort of singularity not attractive to others.  Often she makes them odious with conceit or deformity or dumbness or garrulity.  Dante was such a poor talker that no one would ever ask him to dinner.  If it had not been so I presume his muse would have been sadly crippled by indigestion.  If you had been a good dancer and a lady’s favorite I wonder if you would have studied Kirkham and Burns and Shakespeare and Blackstone and Starkie, and the science of surveying and been elected to the Legislature.  I wonder if you could even have whipped Jack Armstrong.”

“Or have enjoyed the friendship of Bill Berry and acquired a national debt, or have saved my imperiled country in the war with Black Hawk,” Abe laughed.

In the matter of dress the Postmaster had great confidence in the taste and knowledge of his young friend, Harry Needles, whose neat appearance Abe regarded with serious admiration.  So he asked Harry to go with him on this new mission and help to choose the goods and direct the tailoring, for it seemed to him a highly important enterprise.

“It’s a difficult problem,” said Abe.  “Given a big man and a small sum and the large amount of respectability that’s desired.  We mustn’t make a mistake.”

They got a ride part of the way with a farmer going home from Rutledge’s Mill.

“Our appropriation is only fifteen dollars,” said Abe as they came in sight of “the big village” on a warm bright day late in October.  “Of course I can’t expect to make myself look like the President of the United States with such a sum but I want to look like a respectable citizen of the United States if that is possible.  I’ll give the old Abe and fifteen dollars to boot for a new one and we’ll see what comes of it.”

Springfield had been rapidly changing.  It was still small and crude but some of the best standards of civilization had been set up in that community.  Families of wealth and culture in the East had sent their sons and a share of their capital to this little metropolis of the land of plenty to go into business.  The Edwardses in their fine top boots and ruffled shirts were there.  So were certain of the Ridgleys of Maryland—­well known and successful bankers.  The Logans and the Conklings and the Stuarts who had won reputations at the bar before they arrived were now settled in Springfield.  Handsome, well groomed horses, in silver mounted harness, drawing carriages that shone “so you could see your face in them,” to quote from Abe again, were on its streets.

“My conscience!  What a lot of jingling and high stepping there is here in the street and on the sidewalk,” said Abe as they came into the village.  “I reckon there’s a mile of gold watch chains in this crowd.”