Apart from these signs and the deep, humorous delight which he evidently took in his children, there may be something slightly forbidding in this figure of a gaunt man, disappointed in ambition and not even happy at home, rubbing along through a rather rough crowd, with uniform rough geniality and perpetual jest; all the while in secret forging his own mind into an instrument for some vaguely foreshadowed end.  But there are two or three facts which stand out certain and have to be taken account of in any image we may be tempted to form of him.  In the first place, his was no forbidding figure at the time to those who knew him; a queer and a comic figure evidently, but liked, trusted, and by some loved; reputed for honest dealing and for kindly and gentle dealing; remarked too by some at that time, as before and ever after, for the melancholy of his face in repose; known by us beyond doubt to have gone through great pain; known lastly among his fellows in his profession for a fire of anger that flashed out only in the presence of cruelty and wrong.

His law practice, which he pursued with energy, and on which he was now, it seems, prepared to look as his sole business in life, fitted in none the less well with his deliberately adopted schemes of self-education.  A great American lawyer, Mr. Choate, assures us that at the Illinois bar in those days Lincoln had to measure himself against very considerable men in suits of a class that required some intellect and training.  And in his own way he held his own among these men.  A layman may humbly conjecture that the combination in one person of the advocate and the solicitor must give opportunities of far truer intellectual training than the mere advocate can easily enjoy.  The Illinois advocate was not all the time pleading the cause which he was employed to plead, and which if it was once offered to him it was his duty to accept; he was the personal adviser of the client whose cause he pleaded, and within certain limits he could determine whether the cause was brought at all, and if so whether he should take it up himself or leave it to another man.  The rule in such matters was elastic and practice varied.  Lincoln’s practice went to the very limit of what is permissible in refusing legal aid to a cause he disapproved.  Coming into court he discovered suddenly some fact about his case which was new to him but which would probably not have justified an English barrister in throwing up his brief.  The case was called; he was absent; the judge sent to his hotel and got back a message:  “Tell the judge I’m washing my hands.”  One client received advice much to this effect:  “I can win your case; I can get you $600.  I can also make an honest family miserable.  But I shall not take your case, and I shall not take your fee.  One piece of advice I will give you gratis:  Go home and think seriously whether you cannot make $600 in some honest way.”  And this habit of mind was beyond his control.  Colleagues