in later years. He acted as a sort of "next friend" to parties before the local justices of the peace, and drew mortgages and contracts for his neighbours, though he does not seem to have received pay for these services. It was the only apprenticeship to the Law that he could afford, and he became an articled clerk to himself, so to speak.

By turns he was a store clerk, surveyor, and postmaster at New Salem until 1834, when he was elected to the Legislature, and had to borrow two hundred dollars to buy clothing to be fit for his new dignity. On March 24th, 1836, he became legally qualified to practise the law, and left New Salem to settle in the county town of Springfield, and entered into partnership with a lawyer from Kentucky, J. T. Stuart, who had already shown him much kindness.

The story of his coming to Springfield is told by his friend Joshua Speed, a prosperous young merchant of the town, to whom he went on his first arrival. "He had ridden into the town," writes Speed, "on a borrowed horse and engaged from the only cabinet-maker in the village a single bedstead. He came on to my store, set his saddle-bags on the counter, and inquired what the furniture of a single bedstead would cost. I took slate and pencil, made a calculation, and found the sum for furniture complete would amount to seventeen dollars in all.

"Said he, 'It is probably cheap enough; but I want to say that cheap as it is I have not the money to pay, but if you will credit me until Christmas and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay

you then. If I fail in that, I will probably never pay

you at all." "

The good Speed was so touched by the melancholy tones in which he spoke of possible failure that he offered him a share of his own room, which contained a large double bed.

"Where is your room?" asked Lincoln.

Upstairs," said his friend, pointing to a stairway that led out of the store.

Lincoln hitched up his saddle-bags, ran upstairs, and took possession of his room, returning in a few moments, smiling contentedly, and announced: "Well, Speed, I'm moved."

One of Speed's store clerks was William H. Herndon, for whom Lincoln had a great affection. He also slept in the big room over the store, and the three young friends were all earnest in politics, study, and debate. On leaving Stuart, Lincoln became partner with Stephen T. Logan for a few years, until both were running for Congress, when they parted in a friendly spirit, and Lincoln was on his own. It was then, in 1845, that he proposed to his young friend Herndon that he should come into partnership with him. The young man hung back on the ground of want of practice and inexperience, but Lincoln clinched the matter in his kindly, masterful way, saying: "Billy, I can trust you, if you will trust me." Billy and Abraham were Jonathan and David through sixteen years of practice in the law, and it is through his junior partner's reminiscences that we gain the most intimate picture of Lincoln the advocate.

To appreciate fully the power of Lincoln among the

lawyers of his day, we must not forget how different were the circumstances of the administration of justice from anything our generation has experienced. Lincoln had seen even rougher courts of justice than those he practised in. We know that as a lad he used to haunt the Boonville Court-house whenever a trial was forward, and years afterwards, at the White House, reminded Breckenridge the advocate that he had heard him defend a murderer there. "I concluded," said Lincoln, "that if I could ever make as good a speech as that, my soul would be satisfied, for it was the best I had ever heard." In these earliest days the Court-house was merely a log hut, and the hunters and trappers who formed the jury retired into the woods to consider their verdict.

Mr. Hill, in his admirable essay on "Lincoln the Lawyer "a book too little known in this countryreports the address of a learned judge to the prisoner in "The People v. Green" to illustrate the manners of pioneer justice. "Mr. Green," began the learned judge very politely," the jury in their verdict say you are guilty of murder, and the law says you are to be hung. Now, I want you and all your friends down on Indian Creek to know that it is not I who condemn you, but the jury and the law. Mr. Green, the law allows you time for preparation, so the Court wants to know what time you would like to be hung."

The prisoner" allowed " it made no difference to him, but His Honour did not appreciate this freedom of action.

"Mr. Green, you must know it is a very serious matter to be hung," he protested uneasily. "You'd better take

all the time you can get. The Court will give you until this day four weeks."

The prosecutor thought this but a tame ending, and reminded the judge that the correct thing was to pronounce a formal sentence and exhort the prisoner to repentance.

"Not at all," interrupted the judge. "Mr. Green understands the whole matter as if I had preached to him for a month. He knows he's got to be hung this day four weeks. You understand it that way, don't you?" Mr. Green nodded, and the Court adjourned.

Rough and ready as the formalities of justice might be, it was very necessary in the judge's own interest to make it clear that what he was administering was really law. Too much learning was apt to puzzle a backwoodsman jury, and Mr. Hill has another contemporary story of a foreman who returned to a learned judge to say his jury could not agree their verdict, and on being asked what the trouble was, replied: "Judge, this 'ere is the difficulty. The jury want to know if that thar what you told us was r'al'y the law or on'y jist your notion."

Even when Lincoln joined the Illinois Bar the courts were very primitive. The judge sat on a raised platform with a pine or whitewood board on which to write his notes. There was a small table on one side for the clerk, and a larger one, sometimes covered with green baize, for the lawyers who sat around and rested their feet on it. There were few law books. The Revised Statutes, the Illinois Form Book, and a few text-books might be found in most towns, but there were no extensive law libraries anywhere. From one Court-house to another

the judge drove in a gig or buggy, the Bar following for the most part on horseback with a clean shirt and one or two elementary law books in their saddle-bags. Some too poor to ride tramped the circuit on foot, but as there were many horse thieves to defend, and a horse was a well-recognised fee, it was not long before a young man of ability was mounted.

Such was the circuit when Lincoln first joined it. He was then twenty-seven years of age, "six feet four inches in height, awkward, ungainly and apparently shy. He was dressed in ill-fitting homespun clothes, the trousers a little too short and the coat a trifle too large. He had the appearance of a rustic on his first visit to the circus." He kept his bank-book and the bulk of his letters in his hat, a silk plug, and a memo. would be jotted down on paper and stuck in the lining of his hat. No wonder Stanton, the courtly advocate of Chicago, sneered contemptuously at the "long-armed creature from Illinois," though he learned in the end to admire and respect him.

But the public recognised his capacity at once. In spite of physical and social drawbacks, Lincoln as an advocate was an immediate success. He was soon on one side or the other in every important case, and was pointed out to strangers by proud citizens of Springfield as "Abe Lincoln, the first lawyer of Illinois !" He was a great favourite not only with the public, but with his fellowlawyers on circuit. Although he never drank intoxicating liquor, and did not smoke or chew tobacco, he was fond of a horse-race or a cock-fight, and when addressing his fellow-countrymen drew his illustrations from these