extraordinary kindness, though he always remained shy in their
presence. This favor on their part was fortified by his striking
honesty in little points which the close-seeing feminine eye never
misses. To cap the climax he defended the purity of social order with
a rarity in those quarters sufficient to single him out. Not that the
roughest Westerner was not excessively gallant, but his restrictions
in the ladies' presence did not always curb his proneness to "tall
talk."

Once in the way, a loafer hanging about in the store, and having paid
only attention to the dram counter, the necessary concomitant of the
village center, became garrulous, but unfortunately more than
seasoned the flow with a profanity tolerably rich in variety if
not distinguished for refinement; he was of the Clary's Grove
_genus_. As there was a crowd at the "ladies' department," that
is, the dry-goods and finery, where it happened Lincoln was commonly
besieged, the language was resented by woman's weapons--tosses of the
head, affected deafness, glances into the future, and so on, but the
clerk resented it in another way. He bade him be silent.

Now, the fellow thought, with his kind, that he was entitled to exhale
the breath which was strengthened by the strong waters vended here,
and expressed himself more foully than before.

He had a resentment against the clod rising to be a flower of
courtesy, and here was his opportunity to satisfy the grudge,
and before an audience timid and not apt to intervene.

Singularly, the men who most despise women are the ones who seek to
have her applause. He wished to see the man who would stop him from