verse, and
they are not the verses of a man to whom any of the familiar forms of
poetic association were unusual. They are those of a man in whom the
habitual undercurrent of thought was melancholy.

Apart from these signs and the deep, humorous delight which he
evidently took in his children, there may be something slightly
forbidding in this figure of a gaunt man, disappointed in ambition and
not even happy at home, rubbing along through a rather rough crowd,
with uniform rough geniality and perpetual jest; all the while in
secret forging his own mind into an instrument for some vaguely
foreshadowed end. But there are two or three facts which stand out
certain and have to be taken account of in any image we may be tempted
to form of him. In the first place, his was no forbidding figure at
the time to those who knew him; a queer and a comic figure evidently,
but liked, trusted, and by some loved; reputed for honest dealing and
for kindly and gentle dealing; remarked too by some at that time, as
before and ever after, for the melancholy of his face in repose; known
by us beyond doubt to have gone through great pain; known lastly among
his fellows in his profession for a fire of anger that flashed out only
in the presence of cruelty and wrong.

His law practice, which he pursued with energy, and on which he was
now, it seems, prepared to look as his sole business in life, fitted in
none the less well with his deliberately adopted schemes of
self-education. A great American lawyer, Mr. Choate, assures us that
at the Illinois bar in those days Lincoln had to measure himself
against very considerable men in suits of a class that required some
intellect and training. And in his own way he held his own among these
men. A layman may humbly conjecture that the combination in one person
of the advocate and the solicitor must give opportunities of far truer
intellectual training than the mere advocate can easily enjoy. The
Illinois advocate was not all the time pleading the cause which he was
employed to plead, and which if it was once offered to him it was his
duty to accept; he was the personal adviser of the client whose cause
he pleaded, and within certain limits he could determine whether the
cause was brought at all, and if so whether he should take it up
himself or leave it to another man. The rule in such matters was
elastic and practice varied. Lincoln's practice went to the very limit
of what is permissible i