e and babies, and I provide enough for them. Most of those who bring
their cases to me need the money more than I do. Other lawyers rob them.
They act like a pack of wolves. They have no mercy. So when a needy
fellow comes to me in his trouble--sometimes it's a poor widow--I can't
take much from them. I'm not much of a Shylock. I always try to get them
to settle it without going into court. I tell them if they will make it
up among themselves I won't charge them anything.'

"'Well, Mr. Lincoln,' said father with a laugh, 'if they were all like
you there would be no need of lawyers.'

"'Well,' exclaimed Lawyer Lincoln with a quizzical inflection which
meant much. 'Look out for the millennium, Mr. Man--still, as a great
favor, I'll charge you a fat fee if I ever find that fellow and can get
anything out of him. But that's like promising to give you half of the
first dollar I find floating up the Sangamon on a grindstone, isn't it?
I'll take a big slice, though, out of the grindstone itself, if you say
so,' and the tall attorney went out with the peculiar laugh that
afterward became world-famous.

"Not long afterward, while in Bloomington, out on the circuit, Mr.
Lincoln ran across the man who had disappeared from Springfield 'between
two days,' carrying on an apparently prosperous business under an
assumed name. Following the man to his office and managing to talk with
him alone, the lawyer, by means of threats, made the man go right to the
bank and draw out the whole thousand then. It meant payment in full or
the penitentiary. The man understood it and went white as a sheet. In
all his sympathy for the poor and needy, Mr. Lincoln had no pity on the
flourishing criminal. Money could not purchase the favor of Lincoln.

"Well, I hardly know which half of that thousand dollars father was
gladder to get, but I honestly believe he was more pleased on Mr.
Lincoln's account than on his own.

"'Let me give you your five hundred dollars before I change my mind,' he
said to the attorney.

"'One hundred dollars is all I'll take out of that,' Mr. Lincoln replied
emphatically. 'It was no trouble, and--and I haven't earned even that
much.'

"'But Mr. Lincoln,' my father demurred, 'you promised to take half.'

"'Yes, but you got my word under false pretenses, as it were. Neither of
us had the least idea I would collect the bill even if I ever found the
fellow.'

"As he would not accept more than one hundred dollars that day, f