No compliments, please. I want you to be downright mean," Bim protested.

Kelso looked up with a smile: "My boy, it was Leonardo da Vinci who said
that a man could have neither a greater nor a less dominion than that
over himself."

"What a cruel-looking villain he is!" Bim exclaimed, with a smile.
"I wouldn't dare say what I think of him."

"If you keep picking on me I'll cut loose and express my opinion of you,"
he retorted.

"Your opinions have ceased to be important," she answered, with a look of
indifference.

"I think this is a clear case of assault and flattery," said Kelso.

"It pains me to look at you," Bim went on.

"Wait until I learn to play the flute and the snare drum," Harry
threatened.

"I'm glad that New Salem is so far away," she sighed.

"I'll go and look at the new moon through a knot hole," he laughed.

"My dears, no more of this piping," said Kelso. "Bim must tell us what
she has learned of the great evil of slavery. It is most important that
Abe should hear it."

Bim told of revolting scenes she had witnessed in St. Louis and New
Orleans--of flogging and buying and selling and herding. It was a painful
story, the like of which had been traveling over the prairies of Illinois
for years. Some had accepted these reports; many, among whom were the
most judicious men, had thought they detected in them the note of gross
exaggeration. Here, at last, was a witness whose word it was impossible
for those who knew her to doubt. Abe put many questions and looked very
grave when the testimony was all in.

"If you have any doubt," said Bim, "I ask you to look at that mark on my
arm. It was made by the whip of Mr. Eliphalet Biggs."

The young men looked with amazement at a scar some three or four inches
long on her forearm.

"If he would do that to his wife, what treatment could you expect for his
niggers?" Bim asked. "There are many Biggses in the South."

"What so vile as a cheap, rococo aristocracy--growing up in idleness, too
noble to be restrained, with every brutal passion broad blown as flush as
May?" Kelso growled.

"Nothing is long sacred in the view of any aristocracy--not even God,"
Abe answered. "They make a child's plaything of Him and soon cast Him
aside."

"But I hold that if our young men are to be trained to tyranny in a lot
of little nigger kingdoms, our Democracy will die."

Abe made no answer. He was always slow to commit himself.

"The North is partly to blame for wha