whom he was engaged to assist in cases agreed that if a case lost his sympathy he became helpless and useless in it.  This, of course, was not the way to make money; but he got along and won a considerable local position at the bar, for his perfect honesty in argument and in statement of fact was known to have won the confidence of the judges, and a difficult case which he thought was right elicited the full and curious powers of his mind.  His invective upon occasion was by all accounts terrific.  An advocate glanced at Lincoln’s notes for his speech, when he was appearing against a very heartless swindler and saw that they concluded with the ominous words, “Skin Defendant.”  The vitriolic outburst which occurred at the point thus indicated seems to have been long remembered by the Illinois bar.  To a young man who wished to be a lawyer yet shrunk from the profession lest it should necessarily involve some dishonesty Lincoln wrote earnestly and wisely, showing him how false his impression of the law was, but concluding with earnest entreaty that he would not enter the profession if he still had any fear of being led by it to become a knave.

One of his cases is interesting for its own sake, not for his part in it.  He defended without fee the son of his old foe and friend Jack Armstrong, and of Hannah, who mended his breeches, on a charge of murder.  Six witnesses swore that they had seen him do the deed about 11 P.M. on such and such a night.  Cross-examined:  They saw it all quite clearly; they saw it so clearly because of the moonlight.  The only evidence for the defence was an almanac.  There had been no moon that night.  Another case is interesting for his sake.  Two young men set up in a farm together, bought a waggon and team from a poor old farmer, Lincoln’s client, did not pay him, and were sued.  They had both been just under twenty-one when they contracted the debt, and they were advised to plead infancy.  A stranger who was present in Court described afterwards his own indignation as the rascally tale was unfolded, and his greater indignation as he watched the locally famous Mr. Lincoln, lying back in his seat, nodding complacently and saying, “I reckon that’s so,” as each of the relevant facts was produced, and the relevant Statute read and expounded.  At last, as the onlooker proceeded to relate, the time came for Lincoln to address the jury, with whom, by Illinois law, the issue still rested.  Slowly he disengaged his long, lean form from his seat, and before he had got it drawn out to its height he had fixed a gaze of extraordinary benevolence on the two disgraceful young defendants and begun in this strain:  “Gentlemen of the Jury, are you prepared that these two young men shall enter upon life and go through life with the stain of a dishonourable transaction for ever affixed to them,” and so forth at just sufficient length and with just enough of Shakespearean padding about honour.  The result with that emotional