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They told how Abraham Lincoln, when he was postmaster of New Salem, used to carry the letters in his coon-skin cap and deliver them at sight; how in 1822 the mails were carried on horseback and not in stages, so as to have the quickest possible service; and how the news of Madison's election was three weeks in reaching the people of Kentucky.
The bridegroom came in copperas-colored jeans domestic manufacture as a holiday suit; or, perhaps, a hunting-shirt of buckskin, all fringed around the skirt and cape, and a "coon-skin" cap, with moccasins.
He's a big, tall citizen with lanky, long ha'r, an' is dressed in a blanket huntin' shirt an' has a coon-skin cap with the tail hangin' over his left y'ear. Also, he packs a Hawkins rifle, bullets about forty to the pound. For myse'f, I don't get entranced none with this person's looks, an' as I ain't fit, physical, for no skrimmage, I has to sing plumb low.
Early in the last century the hardy wood-choppers began to come west, out of Vermont. They founded their homes in the Adirondack wildernesses and cleared their rough acres with the axe and the charcoal pit. After years of toil in a rigorous climate they left their sons little besides a stumpy farm and a coon-skin overcoat.
It was Johnnie Green! He passed right underneath the tree where they were perched. And as Mrs. Coon peeped down at him she shuddered and shivered and shook so hard that Fatty couldn't help noticing it. "What's the matter?" he asked, as soon as Johnnie Green was out of sight. "His cap!" Mrs. Coon exclaimed. "He is wearing a coon-skin cap!" Now do you wonder that she was upset?
"So Dan went down ter Aun' Peggy de nex' night, wid a young shote, en Aun' Peggy gun 'im de cha'm. She had tuk de ha'rs Dan had lef wid 'er, en a piece er red flannin, en some roots en yarbs, en had put 'em in a little bag made out'n 'coon-skin.
He stood upon the rough plank platform, leaning on his rifle, with the game-bag and its burden of purloined explosive hanging slouchily beneath one arm, his coon-skin cap down well upon his eyes, those eyes, half closed, gazing at the newcomers with all the curiosity which they would have shown at sight of savages from some far foreign shore.
Next day while working on the Coon-skin Sam and Yan discussed thoroughly the unpleasant incident of the night before, but they decided that it would be unwise to speak of it to Caleb unless he should bring up the subject, and Guy was duly cautioned.
His instinct was to be a scholar and a hermit. And he had a knack of putting life and laughter into the simplest parties. Sometimes when we had finished riding, we had tea in the garden. It would be turning cool, and she would slip a heavy coon-skin coat over her riding things; and there was a long voluminous polo-coat of John's that I used to borrow.
Engaged in the thrilling work of felling a pine-tree to extend his father's clearing, they found the settler's son, a brawny fellow about Cyrus's age, in buckskin leggings and coon-skin cap, who wielded his axe with arms which were tough and knotted as pine limbs.
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