which was our usual bed-time on the Circuit when Lincoln was around.

Whoever shall read this speech cannot fail to note the simplicity of its style, clearness of its diction and the force and completeness of its argument. Not only such matters as are patent to the common apprehension, but those likewise, which are recondite, are thoroughly discussed and made perfectly lucid; nothing is left to conjecture, nor could any. body not warped by a pro slavery bias disagree with him; nor could I fail to observe the complete ease and absence of any strain or labored effort displayed; he had no time or opportunity to make any preparation. Davis and I were with him from the adjournment of court till we went to the court house; he regaled us with stories-then made this great speech; then resumed his story-telling where he left off as if the making of such a speech as this was pastime.

same

Although Lincoln had met Douglas at a joint debate at Springfield, and likewise at Peoria earlier in that month, yet this was the first independent, untrammeled speech he ever made on the slavery question, and it also was the last one prior to May 29th, 1856, at Bloomington. At the earnest solicitation of Douglas, a few days previously, each agreed to speak no more during that canvass, but Douglas did, notwithstanding, speak at Princeton; and Lincoln did speak, notwithstanding, at our town. It was wholly unnecessary, however, inasmuch as our district was a whig district par excellence, consequently we needed no antiNebraska speech to set us right, inasmuch as our people adhered to old party lines.

A week subsequently I substantially repeated this speech to about fifty men in the little court-room, about twenty feet square, at Monticello, while a tailor plied his vocation in one corner of the room. Court sat there four days in the year, and the tailor sat there cross-legged for the remaining days, and his suits were of greater utility than the suits which were tried during court time.

X.

LINCOLN AS A LAWYER.

"Let me behold

Thy face-surely this man was born of woman:
Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,
Perpetual, sober gods! I do proclaim

An honest man--mistake me not-but one;
No more, I pray."

-SHAKESPEARE.

A lawyer is a learned gentleman who rescues your property from your adversary and appropriates it to himself.

God works wonders now and then,
Here lies a lawyer--an honest man.

-TER.

-DR. JOHNSON.

His character as a lawyer was controlled and molded by his character as a man.

His moral and intellectual honesty was "all wool and a yard wide," as the adage is, and was not set aside or trenched upon by the pressure or emergencies of a law-suit or a client's wishes. When on the right side of a case which might enlist personal feeling, he was terrible as an army with banners; but on the wrong side he was frequently an injury to his case. He understood human nature thoroughly, and was very expert and incisive in his examination and cross-examination of witnesses. If a witness told the truth without evasion Lincoln was respectful and patronizing to him, but he would score a perjured witness unmercifully. He took no notes, but remembered everything quite as well as those who did so. I remember once we all, court and lawyers, except Lincoln, insisted that a witness had sworn so-and-so, but it turned out that Lincoln was correct and that he recollected better than the united bench and bar. But, with all his candor and honesty, there was a method and

shrewdness which Leonard Swett well understood, and which he has thus graphically and forcibly described.

Swett says: "As he entered the trial, where most lawyers object, he would say he 'reckoned' it would be fair to let this in, or that; and sometimes when his adversary could not quite prove what Lincoln knew to be the truth, he would say he 'reckoned' it would be fair to admit the truth to be so and so. When he did object to the court, after he heard his objections answered, he would often say: 'Well, I reckon I must be wrong.'

"Now, about the time he had practiced this way about three-quarters through the case, if his adversary didn't understand him, he would wake up in a few moments, finding he had feared the Greeks too late, and wake up to find himself beaten. He was 'wise as a serpent' in the trial of a case, but I have got too many scars from his blows to certify that he was 'harmless as a dove.' When the whole thing is unraveled the adversary begins to see that what he was so blandly giving away, was simply what he couldn't get and keep. By giving away six points and carrying the seventh, he carried his case, and, the whole case hanging on the seventh, he traded away everything which would give him the least aid in carrying that. Any one who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man would very soon wake up on his back, in a ditch."

Another eminent jurist thus describes him:

"Without the advantage of that mental culture which is afforded by a classical education, he learned the law as a science. Nature endowed him with a philosophical mind, and he learned and appreciated the elementary principles of the law and the reasons why they had become established as such. He remembered well what he read, because he fully comprehended it. He understood the relations of things, and hence his deductions were rarely wrong from any given state of facts. So he applied the principles of the law to the transactions of men with great clearness and precision.