‘Abe,’ says Aunt Sally, ‘I had to come and say good-by. They say down our way they’re goin’ to kill you if they get you down to Washington, but I don’t believe it. I just tell ’em you’re too smart to let ’em git ahead of you that way. I thought I’d come and bring you a present, knit ’em myself,’ and I’ll be blamed if that old lady didn’t pull out a great big pair of yarn socks and hand ’em to Mr. Lincoln. [Illustration: “_Aunt Sally, you couldn’t a done nuthin’ which would have pleased me better_”] “Well, sir, it was the funniest thing to see Mr. Lincoln’s face pucker up and his eyes twinkle and twinkle. He took them socks and held ’em up by the toes, one in each hand. They was the longest socks I ever see. ‘The lady got my latitude and longitude ’bout right, didn’t she, gentlemen?’ he says, and then he laid ’em down and he took Aunt Sally’s hand and he says tender-like, ‘Aunt Sally, you couldn’t a done nothin’ which would have pleased me better. I’ll take ’em to Washington and wear ’em, and think of you when I do it.’ And I declare he said it so first thing I knew I was almost blubberin’, and I wan’t the only one nuther, and I bet he did wear ’em in Washington. I can jest see him pullin’ off his shoe and showin’ them socks to Sumner or Seward or some other big bug that was botherin’ him when he wanted to switch off on another subject and tellin’ ’em the story about Aunt Sally and her flapjacks. “‘Was there much talk about his bein’ killed?’ Well, there’s an awful lot of fools in this world and when they don’t git what they want they’re always for killin’ somebody. Mr. Lincoln never let on, but I reckon his mail was pretty lively readin’ sometimes. He got pictures of gallows and pistols and other things and lots of threats, so they said. I don’t think that worried him much. He was more bothered seein’ old Buchanan givin’ the game away. ‘I wish I could have got down there before the horse was stole,’ I heard him say onct in here, talkin’ to some men. ‘But I reckon I can find the tracks when I do git there.’ It was his cabinet bothered him most, I always thought. He didn’t know the men he’d got to take well enough. Didn’t know how far he could count on ’em. He and Judge Gillespie and one or two others was in here one day sittin’ by the stove talkin,’ and he says, ‘Judge, I wisht I could take all you boys down to Washington with me, Democrats and all, and make a cabinet out of you. I’d know where every man would fit and we could git right down to work. Now, I’ve got to learn my men before I can do much.’ ‘Do you mean, Mr. Lincoln, you’d take a Democrat like Logan?’ says the Judge, sort of shocked. ‘Yes, sir, I would; I know Logan. He’s agin me now and that’s all right, but if we have trouble you can count on Logan to do the right thing by the country, and that’s the kind of men I want—them as will do the right thing by the country. ‘Tain’t a question of Lincoln, or Democrat or Republican, Judge; it’s a question of the country.’