don't go so fur.'"

Samson joined in the good-natured laughter that followed.

"If you deal with some Yankees you take your life in your hands," he
said. "They can serve God or Mammon and I guess they have given the Devil
some of his best ideas. He seems to be getting a lot of Yankee notions
lately."

"There was a powerful prejudice in Kentucky against the Yankees," Abe
went on. "Down there they used to tell about a Yankee who sold his hogs
and was driving them to town. On the way he decided that he had sold them
too cheap. He left them with his drover in the road and went on to town
and told the buyer that he would need help to bring 'em in.

"'How's that?' the buyer asked.

"'Why they git away an' go to runnin' through the woods an' fields an' we
can't keep up with 'em.'

"'I don't think I want 'em,' says the buyer. 'A speedy hog hasn't much
pork to carry. I'll give ye twenty bits to let me off.'"

"I guess that Yankee had one more hog than he'd counted," said Samson.

"It reminds me of a man in Pope County who raised the biggest hog in
Illinois," Abe went on. "It was a famous animal and people from far and
near came to see him. One day a man came an' asked to see the hog.

"'We're chargin' two bits for the privilege now,' said the owner.