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."

A public sale was on and the walks were thronged. Women in fine silks and
millinery; men in tall beaver hats and broadcloth and fine linen touched
elbows with the hairy, rough clad men of the prairies and their worn
wives in old-fashioned bonnets and faded coats.

The two New Salem men stopped and studied a big sign in front of a large
store on which this announcement had been lettered:

"Cloths, cassinettes, cassimeres, velvet silks, satins,
Marseilles waistcoating, fine, calf boots, seal and morocco
pumps for gentlemen, crepe lisse, lace veils.
Thibet shawls, fine prunella shoes."

"Reads like a foreign language to me," said Abe. "The pomp of the East
has got here at last. I'd like to know what seal and morocco pumps are. I
reckon they're a contrivance that goes down into a man's pocket and sucks
it dry. I wonder what a cassinette is like, and a prunella shoe. How
would you like a little Marseilles waistcoating?"

Suddenly a man touched his shoulder with a hearty "Howdy, Abe?"

It was Eli, "the wandering Jew," as he had been wont to call himself in
the days when he carried a pack on the road through Peter's Bluff and
Clary's Grove and New Salem to Beardstown and back.

"Dis is my store," said Eli.

"Your store!" Abe exclaimed.

"Ya, look at de sign."

The Jew pointed to his sign-board, some fifty feet long under the
cornice, on which they read the legend:

"Eli Fredenberg's Emporium."

Abe looked him over from head to foot and exclaimed:

"My conscience! You look as if you had been fixed up to be sold to the
highest bidder."

The hairy, dusty, bow-legged, threadbare peddler had been touched by some
miraculous hand. The lavish hand of the West had showered her favors on
him. They resembled in some degree the barbaric pearl and gold of the
East. He glowed with prosperity. Diamonds and ruffled linen and Scotch
plaid and red silk on his neck and a blue band on his hat and a
smooth-shorn face and perfumery were the glittering details that
surrounded the person of Eli.