began to study! He had only about four months of schooling under five different teachers, scattered over several years, and at no period over three weeks at a time. None of these teachers was equipped beyond reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. During his life on the farm he had borrowed every book there was in those frontier neighborhoods. The family Bible he read over and over again. A Justice of the Peace had the "Revised Statutes of Indiana," and that he read with the same thoroughness. The family moved from Indiana to Illinois, where the settlements were closer, and when he came to the village of Salem, he succeeded in borrowing Shakespeare, Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Æsop's "Fables," Weems' "Life of Washington," and a crude "History of the United States." He read while following the plow-to the disgust of his employer-on moonlight nights, lying upon his back in the fields, while going to and from his work, while on the flatboat, while a clerk, and while a merchant. He had no teacher of style or composition. There was little paper in the wilderness, but he wrote compositions on the wooden snow shovel with a piece of charcoal, and rubbed it off and re-wrote, until he had secured by these crude methods and by the teachings of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," that wonderful style in sinewy English which contributed to our literature two of its rarest gems, the Gettysburg Speech, and the Second Inaugural Address.

The following is an illustration of his difficulties in finding books for which he was hungry: The rain came through the roof of the log cabin and ruined Weems' "Life of Washington," which he had borrowed from a distant farmer. This is the "Life" now entirely out of print, in which is the story of the hatchet and the cherry tree-a story that has not found its way into the regular Histories or any other "Life of Washington." It is a story, though, which does more to keep alive in the schools the memory of the Father of his Country, and which has led to more humor, more or less good, than any other incident in his life. Lincoln, with a sad heart, returned the drenched volume to its owner,

who made him work in the fields at twenty-five cents a day until the price which it originally cost had been paid up.

Lincoln possessed one of the most logical of minds and a singular faculty of grasping all the facts, and so marshalling them as to be irresistible in debate. He had that rarest gift of the lawyer the talent to sift vast accumulations of material, testimony, and precedents, until he had hit upon and elucidated the real point upon which rested the success or failure of the case. He impressed these readings upon his mind by making speeches to the horse or the oxen he was driving, to the woods through which he was walking to his work, and at the noonday hour in the fields he would mount a fence and spout his reflections to his fellow-workers.

A lawyer loaned him Blackstone's "Commentaries" in four volumes. Every odd moment from hard work of every kind, necessary to secure the money for a living, was given to the study of this and other elementary works, until he had thoroughly mastered them and the principles of law. He finally was admitted to the bar, but in training, culture, and equipment he differed from most of his associates. Not only that, but his ethics of practice were antagonistic to those of all with whom he came in contact. A case which he believed wrong, he would not take. If, during the course of his investigations, he learned that his client had deceived him, he would decline to proceed. He cared little for money, and his charges were only sufficient for his limited necessities. Much of his practice was on behalf of the poor whom he thought wronged and from whom he could expect no reward. Without the opportunities of the law school or the law office, without the reading of a well-equipped library, he was always deficient in ability to cite precedents and decisions upon which the bar and the bench so largely depend. But he knew by heart the principles of the common law, and, because of his years of communion with the plain people, he was more familiar with ordinary human nature than any man in his Circuit. With the ability to make difficult things plain to the humblest understanding, and to clarify the most murky atmosphere of conflicting testimony, he added humor and a

Facsimile of First Page of Victor Hugo's Letter Accepting Membership on the Committee of the French Democracy

(Formed to commemorate the services of Lincoln to the cause of the Republic and of liberal ideas)

faculty for apt illustration cultivated by his Bible, Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and Æsop's "Fables," and he possessed an exhaustless fund of anecdotes which nobody could tell so well or apply so happily as Abraham Lincoln. When he left the bar, after twenty-three years of practice, to become President of the United States, he stood among the first of the legal lights of the State of Illinois.

But it was in riding the circuit during that quarter of a century, that he was preparing unconsciously for the Presidency. He told me that at the County towns when Court was held, the judge, lawyers, litigants, witnesses, and grand and petit jurors would sit up all night at the hotel, telling stories of things which had happened in the lives of an original frontier people, and he said they were better, more to the point, and infinitely stronger for illustration and the enforcement of argument, than all the stories and anecdotes which were ever invented. Human nature is best studied, public questions are more keenly discussed, character is better exhibited, in the forum of the country grocery or drug store than anywhere else. There gather the elders, more or less wise, the lawyers looking for acquaintances, popularity and clients, and the young men listening and absorbing. Lincoln, with his wonderful gift of humor, anecdote, and argument, was for years the idol of that forum. It was there he learned the lesson, invaluable to him when dealing afterwards with mighty problems of state which required for their solution the support of the people, how to so state his case and make his appeal that it would find a response in the humblest homes in every part of the land.

Lincoln's characteristic as a lawyer was, if possible, to get his client to settle, to bring together antagonists, and to compose their differences. At that early time lawyers habitually encouraged litigation. Lincoln discouraged it, whenever possible. He believed in peace in the family and good will and good neighborhood in the town. He believed it to be a lawyer's duty, and that he was aiding the best interests of his client, to procure a settlement without the expense of litigation. He told an amusing story in this line. He said