wers was irrevocably
conditioned on his own faith in the moral justification of what he was
doing. He had no patience with any conception of the lawyer's function
that did not make him the devoted instrument of justice. For the law as
a game, for legal strategy, he felt contempt. Never under any conditions
would he attempt to get for a client more than he was convinced the
client in justice ought to have. The first step in securing his services
was always to persuade him that one's cause was just He sometimes threw
up a case in open court because the course of it had revealed deception
on the part of the client. At times he expressed his disdain of the
law's mere commercialism in a stinging irony.

"In a closely contested civil suit," writes his associate, Ward Hill
Lamon, "Lincoln proved an account for his client, who was, though he did
not know it at the time, a very slippery fellow. The opposing attorney
then proved a receipt clearly covering the entire cause of action. By
the time he was through Lincoln was missing. The court sent for him to
the hotel. 'Tell the Judge,' said he, 'that I can't come; my hands are
dirty and I came over to clean them.'"(11)

"Discourage litigation," he wrote. "Persuade your neighbors to
compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner
is often a real loser, in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a
peacemaker, the lawyer has a Superior Opportunity of being a good man.
There will still be business enough."(12)

He held his moral and professional views with the same inflexibility
with which he held his political views. Once he had settled upon a
conviction or an opinion, nothing could move him. He was singularly
stubborn, and yet, in all the minor matters of life, in all his merely
personal concerns, in everything except his basal ideas, he was pliable
to a degree. He could be talked into almost any concession of interest.
He once told Herndon he thanked God that he had not been born a woman
because he found it so hard to refuse any request made of him. His
outer easiness, his lack of self-assertion,--as most people understand
self-assertion,--persist in an amusing group of anecdotes of the
circuit. Though he was a favorite with the company at every tavern,
those little demagogues, the tavern-keepers, quickly found out that
he could be safely put upon. In the minute but important favoritism
of tavern life, in the choice of rooms, in the assignment of seats at
tabl