small log cabin settlement of New Salem, Illinois, on the shore of the
Sangamon. They halted about noon in the middle of this little prairie
village, opposite a small clapboarded house. A sign hung over its door
which bore the rudely lettered words: "Rutledge's Tavern."

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. Samson says in his diary that he looked like "an untrimmed
yearling colt about sixteen hands high. He got up slow and kept rising
till his bush of black tousled hair was six feet four above the ground.
Then he put on an old straw hat without any band on it. He reminded me of
Philemon Baker's fish rod, he was that narrer. For humliness I'd match
him against the world. His hide was kind o' yaller and leathery. I could
see he was still in the gristle--a little over twenty--but his face was
marked up by worry and weather like a man's. I never saw anybody so long
between joints. Don't hardly see how he could tell when his feet got
cold."

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 door-step 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