“But look at the New England type of Whig exemplified by the imperious and majestic Webster,” said Douglas.

“Webster was another poor lad,” Lincoln answered.  “His father’s home was a log cabin in a lonely land until about the time Daniel was born when the family moved to a small frame house.  His is the majesty of a great intellect.”

There was much talk of this sort until Mr. Lincoln excused himself to walk home with his two friends who had just returned from the North, being eager to learn of Samson’s visit.  The latter gave him a full account of it and asked him to undertake the collection of Brimstead’s note.

“I’ll get after that fellow right away,” said Lincoln.

“I’m glad to get a chance at one of those men who have been skinning the farmers.  I suppose he has other creditors in Tazewell County?”

“I presume there are many of them.”

“I’ll find out about that,” said Lincoln.

They sat down by the fireside in Samson’s house.

“Joe has decided that he wants to be a lawyer,” said Samson.

“Well, Joe, we’ll all do what we can to keep you from being a shot-gun lawyer,” Abe Lincoln began.  “I’ve got a good first lesson for you.  I found it in a letter which Rufus Choate had written to Judge Davis.  In it he says that we rightly have great respect for the decisions of the majority, but that the law is something vastly greater and more sacred than the verdict of any majority.  ‘It is a thing,’ says he, ’which has stood the test of long experience—­a body of digested rules and processes bequeathed to us by all the ages of the past.  The inspired wisdom of the primeval east, the robust genius of Athens and Rome, the keener modern sense of righteousness are in it.  The law comes down to us one mighty and continuous stream of wisdom and experience accumulated, ancestral, widening and deepening and washing itself clearer as it runs on, the agent of civilization, the builder of a thousand cities.  To have lived through ages of unceasing trial with the passions, interests, and affairs of men, to have lived through the drums and tramplings of conquest, through revolution and reform and all the changing cycles of opinion, to have attended the progress of the race and gathered unto itself the approbation of civilized humanity is to have proved that it carries in it some spark of immortal life.’”

The face of Lincoln changed as he recited the lines of the learned and distinguished lawyer of Massachusetts.

“His face glowed like a lighted lantern when he began to say those eloquent words,” Samson writes in his diary.  “He wrote them down so that Josiah could commit them to memory.”

“That is a wonderful statement,” Samson remarked.

Abe answered:  “It suggests to me that the voice of the people in any one generation may or may not be inspired, but that the voice of the best men of all ages, expressing their sense of justice and of right, in the law, is and must be the voice of God.  The spirit and body of its decrees are as indestructible as the throne of Heaven.  You can overthrow them but until their power is reestablished as surely it will be, you will live in savagery.”