war-describe Valley Forge privations-ice-soldiers' bleeding feet-Pl'ff's husband-Soldier leaving home for army-Skin Def't.-Close."

After describing in vivid figures the sufferings of the revolutionary soldiers at Valley Forge, as barefoot and bleeding they crept over the ice, he turned upon the defendant for fleecing the old woman, and literally did "skin him," sitting there, writhing under Lincoln's fire, a method still in use among country lawyers when desiring to impress a jury. Lincoln won the

case.

On the Circuit Herndon says he drove an open buggy drawn by a horse, raw-boned and weirdlooking like himself. He was dressed like an ordinary farmer or stock-raiser. His hat was brown and

faded, with the nap rubbed off. He wore a grey shawl or a short loose cloak, which was the style prevalent during the Mexican War, and which he had bought in Washington in 1849. His trousers were invariably too short, and his coat and vest hung loosely on his gaunt frame. He carried a carpet bag, in which he kept his books and his change of linen, and an old faded green umbrella, with the knob gone from the handle, and tied together in the middle with a cord to keep it from flying open. Inside he had “ A. Lincoln " sewn in large white cotton letters. He slept in a long, coarse yellow flannel shirt, which reached half-way between his knees and ankles. Attired thus, one of the young lawyers who first saw him said afterwards that he was the ungodliest figure he ever saw. Judge Davis said he never complained of his food or of his bed or lodging.

At one time he was presiding as judge in the absence of Davis, for whom he did that service often. The case brought before him was a sum of $28 on a suit of clothes which a minor son had bought without the authority of his father. The suit was against the father, who was wealthy, and the argument rested upon whether the clothes were necessary and suited the condition of the son's life. Lincoln ruled against the plea of necessity. "I have rarely in my life," he said, “ worn a suit of clothes costing $28."

Of this life on the Circuit many vivid pictures have been left by his colleagues. The freedom and the isolation suited his temperament. Like all sad people, he could be gay and hilarious with his companions. There are pictures of his long gaunt figure stretched upon beds too short, his legs dangling over the footboard, studying Euclid, or of his sitting up in bed talking to himself wild and incoherent nonsense, sitting moodily half the night through before the fire, gazing into it as if in some sombre and gloomy spell. On the other hand, there are pictures of story-telling jousts of not too delicate a flavour, which continued half the night amidst roars of laughter.

or

His home life was even more isolated than his life on the Circuit. He could be seen occasionally walking to and fro on the sidewalk with a child in his arms, or pulling one in a little go-cart. Sometimes he would come furtively from the house very early in the morning, walking as if in deep thought, or in the evening go to a store to entertain the populace crowded around the stove. In the late afternoon he would go home to milk his cow, feed the horse, clean out the very humble stable

and chop wood. He was his own stable-boy, even beyond the time he was President-elect. There is a story of a neighbour hearing the blows of an axe very late in the night, and looking out he saw Lincoln, who had come home from a Circuit, chopping wood for his solitary supper.

In the rising values of land he never bought any and never speculated with it. His fees were modest, more modest than if he had practised in the town. He was invited to join a firm in Chicago, but refused, saying that he had a tendency to consumption, and that Circuit riding suited his health better than the confinement in a city office. But his fees on the Circuit were even smaller than the other lawyers demanded, and he was urged by his partner and by Judge Davis to raise them. This he would never do, and more than once he sent back a fee which his partner took, on the ground that it was exorbitant. There was only one large fee which he received. This was $5000 from the Illinois Railroad, which to-day to a modern corporation lawyer would seem ludicrously small. After winning a case in the railway's favour the firm of Lincoln & Herndon asked for a fee of $2000. A railway official, supposed to be the same McClellan who afterwards became Commander-in-Chief of the army of the Potomac, handed it back, saying that it was as much as Daniel Webster himself would have charged. Lincoln, stung by the retort, and egged on by his fellow-lawyers, brought in a suit for $5000 and won it.

In another important case, in which he was paid well, he was hurt and offended by Edwin M. Stanton, later to become his Secretary of War. In 1857 Lincoln

was invited to Cincinnati by a Mr Manny, to defend him in an action brought by M'Cormick for infringement of the patent on his reaping-machine. The case was important, and several well-known lawyers were brought together. Lincoln was also sent for, and he had prepared himself to speak in the case, for his ambition was aroused. It was understood that he was to make the plea. Later, to his surprise, Edwin M. Stanton was also sent for, and Stanton immediately over-rode him. He practically took the case from his hands and made the coveted speech. To add to this injury, Stanton insulted him. Some say that he called Lincoln within his hearing "a gorilla from Illinois." At any rate, he told Herndon that he had been roughly handled by "that man Stanton," and that he had overheard the latter from an adjoining room, while the door was slightly ajar, ask of someone, "Where did that longarmed creature come from, and what can he expect to do in this case?" Stanton described him as "a long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the Continent." This incident did not prevent Lincoln from making Stanton his Secretary of War when he thought the cause needed him.

There are stories upon stories of little intimate services which connect him with the "plain people," as he called them. His life upon the Circuit made him one of them, and he had so far shaken the home-life from his shoulders that he was gradually tending to that absolute break with conservatism which had tied him down in the early days. He made a return to his

own kind in middle life. It was this coming down to fundamentals which gave him the courage to join the new progressive party of 1854, which meant breaking with his friends and connections as well as with his party. The Clary Grove Boys became more important to him than his wife's lady friends. After saving from the gallows the son of his old friend, Jack Armstrong, who was being tried for murder, he could go back to his home and lie down on the floor in the passage-way, and if her friends called could go to the door and promise "to trot them out." Life was too serious for formalities. The horse-hair sofa, the six stiff horse-hair chairs, and the little centre table, with the gilded books, did not mean anything to him. He was no longer a poor white of Southern Illinois, hungering for the vain flourishes of social life. The pseudo-formalities of convention did not impress him. He was able to stand detached and aloof, and to generalize on the facts around him. Only once in these years did he come out before the public, and that was in 1852, to give a eulogy upon the life of Henry Clay, who had died. His biographers, Nicolay and Hay, refuse to mention the fact, for it was a signal failure. He could no longer do it. There was something wrong in the successes of Clay. Lincoln mentioned a long list of them, but he returned ever to the analysis of the social make-up around him. The South's insistence that the negro had "no right in the white man's charter of rights," that is in the Declaration of Independence, he called false and ludicrous. Even Lincoln, so anxious to speak for the will of the people, found that there was a moral right even above this will which had to be taken into account. It was