“You do not deny the right of revolution.”

“No, but I can see no excuse for it in America.  It has remained for us to add to the body of the law the idea that men are created free and equal.  The lack of that saving principle in the codes of the world has been the great cause of injustice and oppression.  The voice of revolution here would be like that of Iago in the play and worse.  It would be like the unscrupulous lawyer, anxious for a fee, who says to a client, living happily with his wife:  ’I know she is handsome and virtuous and intelligent and loving but she has her faults.  There are lovelier women.  I could easily get a divorce for you.’  We would quickly throw such a man out of the door.  A man’s country is like his wife.  If she is virtuous and well-disposed he should permit no meddling, odious person to come between them, or to suggest to him that he put poison into her tea.  Least of all should he look for perfection in her, knowing that it is not to be found in this world of ours.”

Honest Abe rose and walked up and down the room in silence for a moment.  Then he added: 

“Choate phrased it well when he said ’We should beware of awaking the tremendous divinities of change from their long sleep.  Let us think of that when we consider what we shall do with the evils that afflict us.’”

The boy Joe has been deeply interested in this talk.

“If you’ll lend me a book I’d like to begin studying,” he said.

“There’s time enough for that,” said Lincoln.  “First I want you to understand what the law is and what the lawyer should be.  You wouldn’t want to be a pettifogger.  Choate is the right model.  He has a dignity suited to the greatness of his chosen master.  They say that before a Justice of the Peace in a room no bigger than a shoemaker’s shop his work is done with the same dignity and care that he would show in the supreme court of Massachusetts.  A newspaper says that in a dog case at Beverly he treated the dog as if he were a lion and the crabbed old squire with the consideration due a chief justice.”

“He knows how to handle the English language,” Samson observed.

“He got that by reading.  He is the best read man at the American bar and the best Bible student.  There’s a lot of work ahead of you, Joe, before you are a lawyer and when you’re admitted success comes only of the capacity for work.  Brougham wrote the peroration of his speech in defense of Queen Caroline nineteen times.”

“I want to be a great orator,” the boy exclaimed with engaging frankness.

“Then you must remember that character is the biggest part of it,” Honest Abe declared.  “Great thoughts come out of a great character and only out of that.  They will come even if you have little learning and none of the graces which attract the eye.  But you must have a character that is ever speaking even when your lips are silent.  It must show in your life and fill the spaces between your words.  It will help you to choose and charge them with the love of great things that carry conviction.