104
The Green Bag
getting better, he can now just swear above his breath."
INCIDENTS IN LINCOLN'S LIFE AS A LAWYER ENATOR DEPEW recently recalled some interesting aneodotes con cerning Abraham Lincoln's experience as a lawyer :—
On account of the absence of a court house, the town school, much to the
joy of its scholars, was brought into use. The circuit judge, an elderly, portly man, had had a bad touch of the gout, and the master's hard wooden chair in which he sat became decidedly uncomfortable as a long uninteresting case dragged through the hot afternoon.
Finally the opposing lawyers finished,
"Mr. Lincoln often remarked to me that it was accident that stimulated his ambition to enter the legal profession.
savagely brushing a pair of hungry
He told it in these words:
flies from his shiny bald head, "‘you
“ ‘One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store (at New Salem, Ill.) with a wagon
have heard all the evidence. You have also listened to what the learned counsel
which contained his family and house
hold plunder.
He asked me if I would
buy an old barrel for which he had no
room in his wagon, and which he said contained
nothing
of
special
value.
I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a
dollar for it.
Without further ex
amination I put it away in the store
and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at
the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone's Commentaries. I began to read those famous works, and the more I read the more intensely
interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them.’
"After his admittance to the Spring field bar in 1836, Lincoln rode several
miles to witness a trial by jury. This incident afterward became the theme of one of his best stories with which he was wont to regale us.
and he arose for the final address.
“ ‘ "Gentlemen of thejury,‘ " he began,
have said. If you believe what the counsel for the plaintiff has told you, your verdict will be for the plaintiff; but if on the other hand you believe what the defendant's counsel has told you, then you will give a verdict for the defendant. But if you are like me, and don't believe what either of them has said, then I'll be hanged if I know what you will do!"’
l‘To the majority of his admirers Abraham Lincoln's greatest legal tri umph was the acquittal of an old neighbor named Duff Armstrong, who was charged with murder in the first
degree. "There were several witnesses who testified that they had seen Armstrong commit the deed one night at a time ranging from half after ten to twelve o'clock. "It was a great surprise to those present at the trial when Lincoln attempted no cross-examination, except to persuade the witnesses to state
positively that they were able to see the act distinctly on account of its being a bright moonlight night.
“ ‘The court, I remember,’ said Mr.
"When Lincoln addressed the Court,
Lincoln, ‘was held at a small town in
he announced that the only defense he
the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illinois.
wished
to
submit was an
almanac, O
