Peter Lukins was a slim, sober faced, quiet little man with a long nose who worked in the carding mill.  He never spoke, save when spoken to, and then with a solemn look as if the matter in hand, however slight, were likely to affect his eternal welfare.  In his cups he was speechless and, in a way, dumb with merriment.  He answered no questions, he expressed no opinions, he told no stories.  He only smiled and broke into roars of laughter, even if there was no one to share his joy, as if convinced, at last, of the hopeless absurdity of life.  Some one told of following him from Springfield to New Salem and of hearing him laugh all the way.  Many had noted another peculiarity in the man.  He seemed always to have a week’s growth of beard on his face.

“What can I do about it?” Abe asked.

“I’ve been hopin’ an’ wishin’ some kind of a decent handle could be put on to his name,” said Mrs. Lukins, with her eye upon a knot hole in the counter.  “Something with a good sound to it.  You said that anything you could do for the New Salem folks you was goin’ to do an’ I thought maybe you could fix it.”

Abe smiled and asked:  “Do you want a title?”

“If it ain’t plum owdacious I wisht he could be made a Colonel.”

“That’s a title for fighting men,” said Abe.

“An’ that man has fit for his life ever since he was born,” said Mrs. Lukins.  “He’s fit the measles an’ the smallpox an’ the fever an’ ager an’ conquered ’em.”

“I reckon he deserves the title,” Abe remarked.

“I ain’t sayin’ but what there is purtier men,” she said, reflectively, as she stuck her finger into the knot hole and felt its edges.  “I ain’t sayin’ but what there is smarter men but I do say that the name o’ Bony ain’t hardly fit to be heard in company.”

“A little whitewash wouldn’t hurt it any,” said Abe.  “I’d gladly give him my title of Captain if I could unhitch it someway.”

“Colonel is a more grander name,” she insisted.  “I call it plum coralapus.”

She had thus expressed her notion of the limit of human grandeur.

“Do you like it better than Judge?”

“Wall, Judge has a good sound to it but I’m plum sot on Colonel.  If you kin give that name to a horse, which Samson Traylor has done it, I don’t see why a man shouldn’t be treated just as well.”

“I’ll see what can be done but if he gets that title he’ll have to live up to it.”

“I’ll make him walk a chalk line—­you see,” the good woman promised as she left the store.

That evening Abe wrote a playful commission as Colonel for Peter Lukins which was signed in due time by all his friends and neighbors and presented to Lukins by a committee of which Abe was chairman.

Coleman Smoot—­a man of some means who had a farm on the road to Springfield—­was in the village that evening.  Abe showed him the commission and asked him to sign it.

“I’ll sign it on one condition,” said Smoot.