In the outset of the famous Black-hawk war in Illinois, a "hoss company" was raised in the region where Uncle Abe was (then) a rising lawyer. I say rising, although he had then reached a height sufficient to help himself to most blessings—and he, the aforesaid U.A., was chosen Captain. Uncle Abe rode a "slapping stallion," who was either naturally restive, or appreciated his new honor too highly—at any rate, he corvetted and pirouetted like a very Bucephalus. At last he unhorsed his rider, who landed sprawling on the prairie in one of those green excrescences that abound where bovine herds range. As the discomfitted Uncle Abe rose, and surveyed his predicament, old Pierre Menard, who was a near spectator, remarked in his broken French:

"Vell, I nevair sees any man accoutred en militaire like zat before."

Most old suckers pronounce accoutred as the Yankees do the word cowcumber, and this rendered Menard's joke more unctious.