together, bought a waggon and team from a poor old
farmer, Lincoln's client, did not pay him, and were sued. They had
both been just under twenty-one when they contracted the debt, and they
were advised to plead infancy. A stranger who was present in Court
described afterwards his own indignation as the rascally tale was
unfolded, and his greater indignation as he watched the locally famous
Mr. Lincoln, lying back in his seat, nodding complacently and saying,
"I reckon that's so," as each of the relevant facts was produced, and
the relevant Statute read and expounded. At last, as the onlooker
proceeded to relate, the time came for Lincoln to address the jury,
with whom, by Illinois law, the issue still rested. Slowly he
disengaged his long, lean form from his seat, and before he had got it
drawn out to its height he had fixed a gaze of extraordinary
benevolence on the two disgraceful young defendants and begun in this
strain: "Gentlemen of the Jury, are you prepared that these two young
men shall enter upon life and go through life with the stain of a
dishonourable transaction for ever affixed to them," and so forth at
just sufficient length and with just enough of Shakespearean padding
about honour. The result with that emotional and probably irregular
Western court is obvious, and the story concludes with the quite
credible assertion that the defendants themselves were relieved. Any
good jury would, of course, have been steeled against the appeal, which
might have been expected, to their compassion for a poor and honest old
man. A kind of innocent and benign cunning has been the most engaging
quality in not a few great characters. It is tempting, though at the
risk of undue solemnity, to look for the secret of Lincoln's cunning in
this instance. We know from copybooks and other sources that these two
young men, starting on the down grade with the help of their
blackguardly legal adviser, were objects for pity, more so than the man
who was about to lose a certain number of dollars. Lincoln, as few
other men would have done, felt a certain actual regret for them then
and there; he felt it so naturally that he knew the same sympathy could
be aroused, at least in twelve honest men who already wished they could
find for the plaintiff. It has often been remarked that the cause of
his later power was a knowledge of the people's mind which was
curiously but vitally bound up with his own rectitude.

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