judge asks him whether he knows of any case against him, he is bound to tell the truth. With all respect for so great an authority, I, for my part, am not convinced. If an advocate knows that the law is x, he has no right by acts of commission or omission to infer to the Court that it is y. I think we may accept "Billy's " story as true, and conclude that Lincoln not only took that course, but that it was the right course to take.

As long as a lawyer is ready to forgo fees, there is no reason why he should not ride his hobby-horse of honesty to his heart's content. Lincoln and Herndon as a firm set themselves out to conduct business on unusual lines, and maybe carried their ideals very far, but they made good. It was against their principles to contest a clear matter of right. If they thought a client was in the wrong, they told him so and sent him away. Even when they came to the conclusion that a client had a good case in law, they would not take it up if the moral aspect of it was cloudy. The following letter to a proposed client states Lincoln's views on the matter in his own words : "Yes, we can doubtless gain your case for you; we can set a whole neighbourhood at loggerheads, we can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars to which you seem to have a legal claim, but which rightfully belongs, it appears to me, as much to the woman and her children as it does to you. You must remember, however, that 'some things legally right are not morally right. We shall not take your case, but we will give you a little advice for which we will charge you nothing. You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man. We would advise you to

try your hand at making six hundred dollars some other way."

Lincoln put his personal point of view very forcibly before a young law student who had qualms of conscience about joining the profession. "Let no young man choosing the law for a calling yield to that popular belief that honesty is not compatible with its practice. If in your judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer."

Of necessity, therefore, Lincoln was not a successful advocate in any case unless he was convinced of its righteousness. His limitations were well known, and he was not often called upon to defend prisoners. He did everything in his power to examine carefully into his own clients' grounds of action, but clients are often selfdeceivers and are apt not to tell the whole truth to their advisers. When Lincoln found in the middle of a trial that his client had lied to him, and that justice was opposed to him, he could no longer conduct the case with enthusiasm and courage. On one occasion he was appearing for a plaintiff, and in the middle of the case evidence was brought forward showing that his client was attempting a fraud. Lincoln rose up and went to his hotel. Presently the Judge sent for him, but he refused to come back, saying, "Tell the Judge my hands are dirty; I came over here to wash them." To him the maxim, "Come into court with clean hands," was a command to be obeyed in spirit and letter.

This way of doing business was the only possible one for him. He had a fundamental instinct for right action. He used to explain his necessity for taking whatever course

he felt to be the right one in the following homely anecdote. He was riding on circuit and passed by a deep slough where he saw a wretched pig wallowing and struggling in the mud. It was clear to his mind that the animal could not release himself. However, the mud was deep, and Lincoln was wearing, what for him was unusual, a new suit of clothes. He rode on and left the pig to his fate. He could not get rid of the thought of the poor brute, and carried the picture of his death-struggle in his mind's eye. After riding on about two miles he turned back, waded into the mud, saved the pig, and spoiled his clothes. When he analysed his action, he said that this was really "selfishness, for he certainly went to the pig's relief in order to take a pain out of his own mind."

In the same way, to be connected even professionally with dishonesty was painful to him. It is curious, therefore, that many biographers have accepted a story told about the famous Armstrong case, when he defended the son of Hannah Armstrong, who had shown him much. kindness in his early days at New Salem, in which Lincoln is made the hero of as cute and wicked a deception as was ever practised on a Court and jury. The charge was murder committed at night, and the case turned on identity. One of the witnesses who saw young Armstrong strike the fatal blow was asked by Lincoln how he managed to see so clearly, and replied, "By the moonlight," adding that "the moon was about in the same place that the sun would be at ten o'clock in the morning, and was almost full." On this Lincoln called to an usher for an almanac, and on its production it appeared that

the moon set at midnight and was only slightly past its first quarter.

The charge against Lincoln was that he had given the usher the almanac to have by him and that it was an almanac of the previous year. That Lincoln should have risked such a cheat, and that counsel on the other side and the judge and jury should not have discovered it, is grossly improbable, but the recollection of those present and a reference to an actual almanac show that this story, which for many years had considerable currency, is a myth. Armstrong's life was saved by Lincoln's eloquence; he was pleading for the life of a child he had rocked in the cradle, the son of a woman who had mothered him in his youth, and he threw his heart and soul into the lad's defence.

To reproduce forensic eloquence by any form of literal illustration is scarcely possible. One wants the figure, the tone, the gesture, the crowded Court-house, the magnetic sympathy of the audience, the impassive attention of the jury, and the dramatic suspense of the moment. It is the capacity to turn all these things to account that produces forensic eloquence. Herndon describes a triumph of Lincoln on behalf of the widow of a revolutionary soldier. The defendant was a rascally agent who had pocketed half her pension by way of fee. The whole speech was a very eloquent appeal, and the final words to the jury, if you read them aloud that they may catch the ear, have the ring of sound advocacy in them: "Time rolls by; the heroes of seventy-six' have passed away and are encamped on the other shore. The soldier has gone to rest; and now, crippled, blinded, and broken,

his widow comes to you and to me, gentlemen of the jury, to right her wrongs. She was not always thus. She was once a beautiful woman. Her step was as elastic, her face as fair and her voice as sweet, as any that rang in the mountains of old Virginia. But now she is poor and defenceless out here on the prairies of Illinois, many hundreds of miles away from the scenes of her childhood. She appeals to us who enjoy the privileges achieved for us by the patriots of the Revolution for our sympathetic aid and manly protection. All I ask is, Shall we befriend her?"

The poor old lady obtained judgment, Lincoln paid her hotel bill, and sent her home rejoicing and free of all expense. The notes from which he spoke give us an interesting peep behind the scenes into the machinery of advocacy. They run thus: "No contract-money obtained by Defendant not given by Plaintiff-Revolutionary War-Describe Valley Forge privations-Ice— Soldier's bleeding feet-Plaintiff's husband, soldier leaving home for army-Skin Defendant! Close!" As a delighted contemporary remarked: "When Abe set out to skin a defendant it was some!"

Although he did not rise to the extraordinary heights of vituperation to which O'Connell soared, he was a dangerous man to insult. Forquer, once a Whig, but then a Democrat and office-holder, built himself the finest house in Springfield and decorated it with the first lightning-rod that had ever been seen in the county. He had been abusing Lincoln as a young man who wanted taking down, and when Lincoln's turn came he appealed to the audience: "It is for you, not for me, to say whether I am up or down. This gentleman has alluded