Lawrence Weldon, Lincoln's old friend and legal associate in Illinois.

"I can see him now," says Judge Weldon, "through the decaying memories of thirty years, standing in the corner of the old court-room, and as I approached him with a paper I did not understand, he said: 'Wait until I fix this plug for my _gallus_, and I will pitch into that like a dog at a root.' While speaking, he was busily engaged in trying to connect his suspender with his trousers by making a 'plug' perform the function of a button.

Lincoln liked old-fashioned words, and never failed to use them if they could be sustained as proper.

He was probably accustomed to say 'gallows,' and he never adopted the modern word 'suspender.'" On a certain occasion Lincoln appeared at the trial of a case in which his friend Judge Logan was his opponent.

It was a suit between two farmers who had had a disagreement over a horse-trade.