“Can you sign that?” he asked. And the overwrought client, breaking into sobs, affixed his signature.[iv-22]

So large a disparity in size between Lincoln’s fees and those of other lawyers engaged on the same case, as occurred in the Chiniquy matter, was probably not common. There were differences enough, however, to provoke comment; and one of them, at least, led to an amusing situation. On that occasion he gained a verdict for an aged German who was in danger of losing his farm. The suit had been a trying one, but after years of litigation from court to court, it resulted in their favor. Then Lincoln charged two hundred dollars, which the old man, secure of his property, willingly paid. Yet the attorney’s conscience was not quite at ease in the matter. His reflections were disturbed by a fear that the bill might have been excessive, and the more he thought about it the stronger became his feeling. So, seeking out the lawyer on the other side, who happened to be his brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, Lincoln asked him what he—the losing advocate—had charged his client.

“Two hundred and fifty dollars,” was the reply.

It touched the questioner’s ever-ready sense of humor. He laughed, and decided to keep his fee without further parley.

But there are instances in which fees, or rather such portions of them as appeared exorbitant, were not kept. One of these episodes has, within recent years, been related by Mr. George P. Floyd. Having rented the Quincy House at Quincy, Illinois, from the owner, Mrs. Enos, who lived in Springfield, he employed Mr. Lincoln to draw up a lease and have it executed. When the document reached Mr. Floyd, no bill for services accompanied it. A proper charge would, in his estimation, have been twenty-five dollars. So he sent the attorney that amount. Within a few days, to his astonishment, came this reply:—

On another occasion the writer of this singular missive went further. He not only returned part of his own fee, but he also insisted that his associate should do likewise. The associate himself—it was Ward Hill Lamon, one of Lincoln’s local partners on circuit—tells the story. He had been retained in a case of some importance by a client named Scott. The man was acting as conservator for a demented sister, who possessed property that amounted to ten thousand dollars, mostly in cash. This ready money—a neat sum for those days—had excited the cupidity of a certain adventurer who sought to marry the unfortunate girl, and as an essential preliminary to that step a motion had been made for the removal of her conservator. It was to oppose this action that Scott retained Lamon, insisting, however, at the time, upon having the amount of his fee determined in advance. The attorney advised him to wait, as the matter might not give much trouble, in which event a comparatively small charge would be sufficient. But the suggestion met with no favor, so Lamon named two hundred and fifty dollars. This sum, Scott, anticipating a prolonged contest, eagerly agreed to pay. When the case came on, however, Lincoln, who appeared for him, won a complete victory inside of twenty minutes. And as they stood within the bar, Scott, much elated, paid Lamon the stipulated fee. Mr. Lincoln, who had been looking on while the money was counted out, said to his colleague, after their client’s departure: “What did you charge that man?”

When the amount was stated, he exclaimed: “Lamon, that is all wrong. The service was not worth that sum. Give him back at least half of it.”

But the other protested that the figure had been agreed on in advance, and that Scott expressed himself as perfectly satisfied. To which Lincoln, sorely displeased, rejoined: “That may be, but I am not satisfied. This is positively wrong. Go, call him back, and return half the money at least, or I will not receive one cent of it for my share.”

There was naturally only one course open to the embarrassed junior. He hastened after Scott and, to that gentleman’s astonishment, restored half the fee.

This little colloquy had attracted the attention of both bench and bar. It appears to have especially interested the presiding judge, David Davis, who, calling the fault-finding attorney to him, said in a poorly controlled whisper, which could be heard throughout the court-room: “Lincoln, I have been watching you and Lamon. You are impoverishing this bar by your picayune charges of fees, and the lawyers have reason to complain of you. You are now almost as poor as Lazarus, and if you don’t make people pay you more for your services, you will die as poor as Job’s turkey.”

The rebuke was warmly applauded, but it made no impression on the man against whom it had been directed.

“That money,” said he, “comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl, and I would rather starve than swindle her in this manner.”[iv-24]

The matter was not allowed, however, to rest there. In the evening of that same day, Lincoln found himself arraigned for his offense before the “orgmathorial court.” This was a sort of mock-tribunal maintained by Davis, on circuit, to try lawyers who might be charged with breaches of decorum. No member of the jocund company, it is safe to say, had ever before been placed in the dock for the heinous crime of undervaluing his services. Yet complaints against this particular respondent, as the judge implied, had been frequent enough. Lamon was not the only attorney who had suffered, in mind and pocket, because of his Quixotic acts. Partner Herndon, himself a kindly man, is said to have expostulated repeatedly without effect; and so far as the bar at large was concerned, some of its pillars doubtless felt the jolt at times of Lincoln’s absurdly low standards. He had, moreover, been caught red-handed in the Scott case, so that the plea of a certain famous British barrister, similarly on trial before the circuit mess for disgracing his profession by accepting too small a fee, would hardly have answered. This earlier offender, Sergeant William Davy, is said to have made the since oft-quoted defense: “I took silver because I could not get gold. But I took every farthing the fellow had in the world, and I hope you don’t call that disgracing the profession.”[iv-25]

Davy was nevertheless found guilty and fined. So was Lincoln. His fellow anglers in the turbid waters of the law had no sympathy with the rare sportsmanship which had prompted him to throw back half his catch. He proved to be a true sport, however, in more ways than one. The fine was paid, we are told, with great good humor; and then the culprit told stories that kept the court in an uproar of laughter until after midnight.

There is another—a serious—side to this question. It was succinctly stated by Mr. Hoffman in this passage from one of his resolutions: “As a general rule I will carefully avoid what is called the ‘taking of half fees.’ And though no one can be so competent as myself to judge what may be a just compensation for my services, yet when the quiddam honorarium has been established by usage or law, I shall regard as eminently dishonorable all underbidding of my professional brethren.”

But Lincoln could not see it so. Strong as was his sympathy with these colleagues at the bar, they were forgotten when he sat down to write a bill. His own modest estimate of himself, his compassion for clients in distress, and above all his ever-present fear of taking a dishonest advantage, proved to be the controlling factors. Influenced by such habits of mind, to the very end, he declared, as Lamon states, that their firm should never, with his consent, deserve the reputation enjoyed by those shining lights of the profession—“Catchem and Cheatem.”

To infer from all these things that Lincoln was wholly shiftless in monetary matters, or that he did not, at times, gladly receive the fees which had, according to his own rigid standards, been fairly earned, would be wide of the mark. He welcomed, for the most part, in fact, the gleanings of ordinary practice from clients who could afford to pay. Such small sums as the circuit yielded, and they usually were small, meant much to him; how much, may be seen in the little side-light thrown on the subject by another one of his local partners. Henry C. Whitney, recalling the end of a session, in the summer of 1856, at Urbana, says: “He had collected twenty-five or thirty dollars for that term’s business thus far, and one of our clients owed him ten dollars, which he felt disappointed at not being able to collect. So I gave him a check for that amount, and went with him to the bank to collect it. The cashier, T. S. Hubbard, who paid it, is still living in Urbana, and will probably remember it. I do not remember to have seen him happier than when he had got his little earnings together, being less than forty dollars, as I now recollect it, and had his carpet-bag packed, ready to start home.”[iv-26]

There is something almost pathetic in this scene, when one stops to think that the central figure was at the time a leader of the Illinois bar, and the very man whose persistent tenderness of his clients’ purses had made him an object of censure from the bench. Lincoln himself still further illuminates the topic. Early in his practice, while associated with the thriftiest of his Springfield partners, he wrote to one James S. Irwin: “Judge Logan and myself are willing to attend to any business in the Supreme Court you may send us. As to fees, it is impossible to establish a rule that will apply in all, or even a great many cases. We believe we are never accused of being unreasonable in this particular, and we would always be easily satisfied, provided we could see the money; but whatever fees we earn at a distance, if not paid before, we have noticed, we never hear of after the work is done. We, therefore, are growing a little sensitive on that point.”[iv-27]

Under this same head, one of the younger lawyers has recollected a piece of “fatherly” advice given to him by Lincoln, while they were engaged in court. Addressing the fledgling as the jury went out, and referring to his client, a shifty fellow who sat near by, the older lawyer whispered: “You had better try and get your money now. If the jury comes in with a verdict for him, you won’t get anything.”[iv-28]

So much for what the speaker once termed a “mere question of bread and butter.” As to the rest, when clients did not pay, Lincoln was averse to suing them. His high ideals of professional ethics, no less than a certain personal fealty toward those who had honored him with their confidence, stood in the way of such prosecutions. And when any associates did, on rare occasions, carry the collection of unpaid bills for legal services into court, it was done contrary to his wishes.

An instance of what would then be likely to happen has been related by Mr. Herndon. “I remember,” says he, “once a man who had been indicted for forgery or fraud employed us to defend him. The illness of the prosecuting attorney caused some delay in the case, and our client, becoming dissatisfied at our conduct of the case, hired some one else, who superseded us most effectually. The defendant declining to pay us the fee demanded, on the ground that we had not represented him at the trial of the cause, I brought suit against him in Lincoln’s absence, and obtained judgment for our fee. After Lincoln’s return from the circuit, the fellow hunted him up and, by means of a carefully constructed tale, prevailed on him to release the judgment without receiving a cent of pay. The man’s unkind treatment of us deserved no such mark of generosity from Lincoln, and yet he could not resist the appeal of any one in poverty and want.”[iv-29]

A notable exception to the rule against suing for fees was made in the case of one wealthy client—the Illinois Central Railroad Company. That corporation, through its attorneys, Mason, Brayman, and James F. Joy, sent Mr. Lincoln, during the year 1853, a retainer of two hundred dollars in an important action. Suit had been brought by the corporation against McLean County to enjoin the collection of taxes assessed on railroad lands. The question at issue involved the interpretation of the charter whereby the corporation had been granted exemption from local taxation, on condition that it paid annually a certain percentage of its gross earnings into the State Treasury. Such immunity the Legislature, according to some county officers, had no right to confer; and the McLean authorities insisted upon taxing so much of the railroad property as lay within their jurisdiction. This course had brought about the case at bar by which it was planned to test the constitutionality of that law. When the suit came to trial, Lincoln, facing Stuart and Logan, is said to have conducted the plaintiff’s side “with rare skill”; but the verdict, despite all his exertions, went against him. An appeal was promptly taken, however, to the Supreme Court, where, after twice arguing the case, and after two years of laborious litigation, all told, he succeeded in reversing the decision of the Circuit Court.

This victory meant much to the Illinois Central Railroad Company. Although a comparatively small sum was involved in the suit itself, an adverse result would have brought down upon the company a mass of claims, which, as some thought, might have led to bankruptcy. The road owned nearly two million acres of land and ran through twenty-six counties. Had all these several jurisdictions succeeded in laying their annual burdens upon the company, half a million dollars at interest would hardly have defrayed the tax. In view of all these facts, Lincoln considered two thousand dollars a moderate compensation, and presented a bill for that amount. What was his chagrin, however, to have Mr. Joy disallow the account, because it impressed him as an exorbitant charge from a “common country lawyer.” The modesty of a Socrates or a Cato might have succumbed before such a rebuff. Lincoln withdrew the bill, and started for home. On the way, he stopped at Bloomington, where the affair became known to some of his colleagues on the circuit. In their indignation over the company’s shabby conduct, they persuaded him to make the charge five thousand dollars, and to set forth the increased demand by means of the following unique document:—

We, the undersigned members of the Illinois Bar, understanding that the above entitled cause was twice argued in the Supreme Court, and that the judgment therein decided the question of the claim of counties and other minor municipal corporations to the property of said railroad company, and settled said question against said claim and in favor of said railroad company, are of opinion the sum above charged as a fee is not unreasonable.

These signatures were probably not all appended at Bloomington, nor were these signers the only lawyers whom Lincoln consulted. Anxious to deal fairly with the company beyond the shadow of a doubt, he appealed to several other prominent attorneys for their opinions. One of these, Mr. Koerner, who had enjoyed peculiar opportunities for reaching a judgment in the matter, says: “He wrote me a letter stating that as I knew all about the case, and had been present when it was argued, he would be obliged to me to give him my opinion whether his demand was unreasonable or not. He also stated that he had written to some other members of the bar, and he would be guided by our opinion. I advised him that his charge was very unreasonable, and that he ought to have charged at least ten thousand dollars. I presume he received about the same answer from the other gentlemen.”

At all events, Lincoln’s bill, as revised, was sent in. The company still refused payment, and there seemed but one course open to him. So he promptly brought suit, in McLean County Circuit Court, for the amount of his strangely amended reckoning, with costs.

When the cause was reached for trial, before Judge Davis, on the morning of June 18, 1857, “the defendants,” as the ancient judicial formula expresses it, “came not.” A jury having been empaneled, Mr. Lincoln briefly presented his case, and upon its verdict was awarded a judgment in full. By afternoon one of the company’s general solicitors, John M. Douglas, who had been delayed, arrived from Chicago, too late, of course, for the trial. Greatly disturbed by the embarrassing position in which the default placed him, he sought out Lincoln and begged to have the case reopened so that the corporation might have its day in court. This was readily consented to, the judgment was set aside, and a few days later the issue was again tried. On that occasion, Mr. Douglas called attention to the two hundred dollars paid four years previously as a retainer. It had been forgotten by Lincoln, who at once reduced his claim accordingly. So when the new jury brought in a second verdict, the figure stood at four thousand eight hundred dollars, and that amount, with costs, the defendant promptly paid.[iv-30]

In justice to the Illinois Central Railroad Company its own statement of this affair should not be overlooked. From an elaborately printed monograph, illustrated by reproductions of the documents in the case, and published within recent years, we quote what is offered as an official explanation: “The then general counsel of the road advised Mr. Lincoln that while he recognized the value of his services, still, the payment of so large a fee to a Western country lawyer without protest would embarrass the general counsel with the board of directors in New York, who would not understand, as would a lawyer, the importance of the case and the consequent value of Mr. Lincoln’s services. It was intimated to Mr. Lincoln, however, that if he would bring suit for his bill in some court of competent jurisdiction, and judgment were rendered in his favor, the judgment would be paid without appeal.”

This version of the affair seems hardly convincing. The verdict of the trial court was, it is true, accepted as final by the railroad officials; but they have left slender evidence on which to base the latter-day inference that the suit was a mere formality, framed up between friends to guard against the censure of non-resident directors. The company’s own exhibits, examined in the light of statements made by certain contemporary lawyers, lead one—with all candor be it said—to a contrary conclusion. Even the claim that amicable relations continued uninterrupted, and that Lincoln acted as counsel for the railroad in several important matters thereafter, loses its force when one remembers his peculiar sweetness of character. He might well have conducted the suit, in serious earnest, without losing his temper or his client.[iv-31] Indeed, it is difficult for us, after studying the man thus far, to conceive of him as really quarreling over a sum of money—large or small. And if, when enforcing the collection of perhaps his biggest fee, he managed to take a somewhat arrogant patron into court without snapping delicate professional ties, the feat should be explained, not by the fanciful surmise that there was no cause of irritation between them, but rather by the fact that he was—Lincoln.[iv-32]

This man, of all men, bringing suit to collect a disputed bill for his services, presents a spectacle which should be classed among the caprices of history. It would have seemed more natural, by far, had the plaintiff’s rôle in that action been filled by any one of the colleagues who certified to the fairness of the claim. Though hardly a mercenary bar, the lawyers of the Eighth Judicial Circuit were largely, as the phrase goes, alive to the main chance. Not a few of them at this period laid up competencies; while here and there an able practitioner managed to grow rich. The presiding judge himself, David Davis,—he who had lectured Lincoln on his “picayune charges,”—possessed the true Midas touch. Yet the ample fortune which was eventually credited to him, as indeed much of the wealth amassed by the others, may be traced back to activities and speculations outside the law. Such modes of money-getting held no attractions for Lincoln. His early misadventures in business had cured him of mercantile ambitions, and when friends presented alluring opportunities for profitable investments they were invariably declined. He might truly have replied as did Webster once, under similar circumstances: “Gentlemen, if you have any projects for money-making, I pray you keep me out of them. My singular destiny mars everything of that sort, and would be sure to overwhelm your own better fortunes.”

In Lincoln’s case, however, this unwillingness to seek revenues beyond the pale of the profession lay deeper than any mere question concerning profit or loss. The old-fashioned ideals, which debarred an advocate from pursuing any outside occupation of a gainful nature, had taken firm hold upon his convictions. Indeed, he carried to its extreme this aversion for hampering himself with whatever smacked of trade, going so far as to reject even the mint, anise, and cummin of related business that many able attorneys about him were glad to cull from adjacent fields. Accordingly, when some Springfield property had been levied upon, in a suit brought by Logan and Lincoln, for certain wholesale merchants at Louisville, the junior partner thus curtly dismissed a request of their clients that they collect the rents which might accrue: “As to the real estate, we cannot attend to it as agents, and we therefore recommend that you give the charge of it to Mr. Isaac S. Britton, a trustworthy man, and one whom the Lord made on purpose for such business.”[iv-33]

Yet the man who wrote those lines was in debt. His situation, generally speaking, must have been far from prosperous. At about this very period, we find him frankly giving poverty as the reason for declining an invitation to visit Joshua F. Speed, whom he very much desired to see again. That dear friend, happily married and domiciled in the South, had been sending insistent messages to which Lincoln finally replied: “I do not think I can come to Kentucky this season. I am so poor, and make so little headway in the world, that I drop back in a month of idleness as much as I gain in a year’s sowing.”[iv-34]

The writer—gaunt and grimly humorous—might well-nigh have gone as far as once did another threadbare limb of the law, who declared, “I am so poor, I do not make a shadow when the sun shines.” Indeed, to complete the traditional picture of a needy barrister, Lincoln apparently lacked but one thing—a family. And so he married. Within a few months after the writing of that lugubrious message, Mary Todd, a high-spirited, well-nurtured Kentucky lady, who was living with relatives in Springfield, became his wife. Their marriage ceremony, conducted by the Reverend Charles Dresser according to the ritual of the Episcopal Church, appears to have been somewhat of a novelty in Springfield at that time. Certainly one of the guests was taken off his guard when he heard it. For as the bridegroom repeated after the rector, in an impressive manner, the formula, “With this ring I thee endow with all my goods and chattels, lands and tenements,” Judge Thomas C. Browne, the Falstaff of the bench, standing close to the high contracting parties, exclaimed: “Good gracious, Lincoln, the statute fixes all that!”

This sage interruption was too much for the good minister’s sense of humor, and some moments elapsed before he could proceed.[iv-35] One wonders whether, on the under side of his merriment, there may not have frolicked a suspicion that, had rite or statute been invoked, then and there, in the bride’s behalf, she would have carried away but a slim endowment of worldly goods. On her part, moreover, the lady was apparently quite as poor as the man she married. For like many other wives whose mates have attained professional eminence, Mary Todd brought her husband no fortune to paralyze his industry.

The young couple would gladly have made a honeymoon journey to their native State and availed themselves of Speed’s now repeatedly offered hospitality; but again, poverty stood in the way. They were fain, therefore, to content themselves with a room at Mrs. Beck’s Globe Tavern, where the munificent sum of four dollars paid their whole bill, each week, for board and lodging. This frugal arrangement lasted somewhat more than a year, after which the birth of their first child necessitated a change.[iv-36] So they bought from the Reverend Mr. Dresser his frame cottage, on the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets, that was to serve them as a residence for the rest of their days in Springfield. It appears to have been a modest home among modest surroundings. Here the little family took root, here the problems of the growing household were worked out, and here Abraham Lincoln lived the simple life of an honest gentleman.[iv-37] His personal wants were few,—so few, in fact, as to make him almost seem rich. He had no expensive habits and one looks in vain for what cynics sometimes term redeeming vices. A man whose parents were, to quote one old settler, “torn-down poor,” does not enter upon life handicapped by a love of luxury. In Lincoln’s case the privations of earlier days had left him largely indifferent even to such creature comforts as the refinements of later times brought within reach. And though he rarely then referred to those trying backwoods experiences, the primitive ways instilled by them never quite got out of his system. Always in some degree a son of the soil, he consciously bore himself as belonging to “the plain people.” It was the plain mode of living, therefore, that appealed to him, not only because the more elegant customs were distasteful, but also because he felt keenly aware of how incongruous they would have been with his real self. Nor does the closest scrutiny reveal in all this any trace of affectation. The ostentatious display of poverty, on the one hand, and on the other, the vulgar mannerisms whereby our so-called self-made men sometimes make capital out of their lowly origins, were alike foreign to his nature. He was true here as elsewhere. In fact, when all is said, the man’s simplicity of life must be counted but one more expression of his inherent honesty.

Lincoln made it a practice to serve himself. He really disliked to have others wait upon his wants. Self-reliant in the extreme, to go for a thing came easier with him than to send for it; to do what was required seemed simpler than to order it done. He would walk to the house from the office for a document, though willing clerks were on hand eager to act as his messengers. If the open fire, at home or elsewhere, needed a fresh supply of fuel that did not happen to be promptly forthcoming, he took up the axe, shed his coat, and went vigorously to work over the woodpile. When a small stick was once wanted for some special purpose by a visitor at the Springfield residence, the master of the house fetched it after a brief session with his saw in the rear shed; and when a surprised comment ensued, Lincoln laughingly replied: “We’re not much used to servants about this place. Besides, you know, I have always been my own wood-sawyer.”[iv-38]

The speaker was so little used to servants, in fact, that even when latterly they were at hand, he often opened the front door for visitors himself. This habit keenly annoyed Mrs. Lincoln, particularly as his attire on these occasions appears not always to have conformed with the conventional requirements laid down by authorities on etiquette.

But once, when she was lamenting over certain social breaches of that kind, a member of her family said: “Mary, if I had a husband with a mind such as yours has, I wouldn’t care what he did.”

To which the lady, much mollified, replied: “It is very foolish. It is a small thing to complain of.”

And what might one have expected of a man, who was not only his “own wood-sawyer,” but his own stable-boy as well? For when at home, Mr. Lincoln usually, during that period, milked the cow, fed the horse, and looked after their several wants, in a rudely constructed little barn which stood behind the house.[iv-39] This same democratic simplicity and absence of all pretentions to elegance were observed about the untidy little offices in which he successively practiced his profession. Nor was it otherwise on circuit. The sorry nag that he sometimes bestrode and the shabby buggy in which the animal at other times pulled him from town to town looked consistent with the rest. When accommodations, moreover, at the local hotels were poor,—as they frequently appear to have been,—his easy-going temper remained unruffled. “He never complained of the food, bed, or lodgings,” said Judge Davis. “If every other fellow grumbled at the bill-of-fare, which greeted us at many of the dingy taverns, Lincoln said nothing.”[iv-40] To which Joseph Gillespie, another friend of the old circuit days, adds: “He had a realizing sense that he was generally set down by city snobs as a country Jake, and would accept, in a public-house, any place assigned to him, whether in the basement or the attic, and he seldom called at the table for anything, but helped himself to what was within reach. Indeed, he never knew what he did eat. He said to me once that he never felt his own utter unworthiness so much as when in the presence of a hotel clerk or waiter.”[iv-41]

It would be interesting to determine how much of this self-depreciation was due to the unfavorable impression that Lincoln often made upon those who saw him for the first time. By all accounts he must have been, in those days, anything but an object of beauty. His six-feet-four of homely, awkward angularity apparently owed little to the clothier’s or the haberdasher’s art. For in matters of dress as in other respects, he was still the plebeian, carrying about him, so to say, the broad-axe air which suggested, if it did not actually revive, the crudities of frontier customs. He no longer, it is true, wore, as in his youth, a coon-skin cap or birch-bark moccasins with hickory soles. His shirts were no longer of linsey-woolsey, nor his trousers of butternut jeans or untanned skins. Yet he never quite outgrew the image of himself so arrayed. What appears to have been particularly vivid in his memory, moreover, was a picture of flat-boat times on the river, when his buckskin breeches—the only pair—happened to fall into the water with their owner inside of them. Relating such an experience once, he said: “Now, if you know the nature of buckskin, when wet and dried by the sun, it will shrink, and my breeches kept shrinking until they left several inches of my legs bare, between the tops of my socks and the lower part of my breeches; and whilst I was growing taller they were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that they left a blue streak around my legs that can be seen to this day.”[iv-42]

Similar tendencies, in Lincoln’s later, more modern apparel, to leave a sort of neutral zone unoccupied between trousers and shoes, recurred with atavistic persistence long after he became accustomed to better things. In fact, such misfits troubled him but slightly during the period of his career at the bar. “He probably had as little taste about dress and attire as anybody that ever was born,” writes one attorney who saw him often in those days. “He simply wore clothes because it was needful and customary. Whether they fitted or looked well was entirely above or beneath his comprehension.” The same observer says: “When I first knew him his attire and physical habits were on a plane with those of an ordinary farmer. His hat was innocent of a nap. His boots had no acquaintance with blacking. His clothes had not been introduced to the whisk-broom. His carpet-bag was well worn and dilapidated. His umbrella was substantial, but of a faded green, well worn, the knob gone, and the name ‘A. Lincoln’ cut out of white muslin and sewed in the inside. And for an outer garment, a short circular blue cloak, which he got in Washington in 1849, and kept for ten years.”[iv-43]

Another friend and colleague, James W. Somers, recalling a first photographic glimpse of Mr. Lincoln during the earlier days on circuit, said: “His dress was the most peculiar thing about him. The trousers were several inches too short and illy fitted. The coat was the old-style swallow-tail, and was also too small. His head was surmounted by an antiquated silk hat, battered and rusty, as was his entire suit of broadcloth, originally black. In his hands or under his arm he carried a faded green gingham umbrella. He wore a black silk or mohair stock around his neck, two and a half or three inches wide, buckled at the back, but with no tie or bow in front. At the fall term court he usually wore a short circular cloak, extending down to the hips, and much the worse for wear.”

Disregard of fine apparel, moreover, was not limited by any means to Lincoln’s younger days at the bar. As late as 1858, after he had achieved a prominent place at the bar, his appearance made a similar impression upon Carl Schurz, who drew this graphic thumb-nail sketch of him: “On his head he wore a somewhat battered ‘stove-pipe’ hat. His neck emerged, long and sinewy, from a white collar turned down over a thin black necktie. His lank, ungainly body was clad in a rusty black dress-coat with sleeves that should have been longer; but his arms appeared so long that the sleeves of a ‘store’ coat could hardly be expected to cover them all the way down to the wrists. His black trousers, too, permitted a very full view of his large feet. On his left arm he carried a gray woolen shawl, which evidently served him for an overcoat in chilly weather. His left hand held a cotton umbrella of the bulging kind, and also a black satchel that bore the marks of long and hard usage.”[iv-44]

Evidently the age or condition of a garment was no reason, in Lincoln’s eyes, for discarding it. On the contrary, he appears at times to have cherished an old article of dress as one would an old friend. But such attachments have their penalties. And we find him in the court-room,—yes, on one occasion, in the very presence of the court,—making hasty repairs to ward off untoward accidents. Still other inconveniences grew out of Lincoln’s inattention to dress. He had not been practicing long before his partner, Major John T. Stuart, received a retainer to defend one John W. Baddeley, against whom a suit was pending in the McLean County Circuit Court. When this case came to trial, the major, finding that he could not attend, sent the junior member of the firm, with a letter of introduction, to act as counsel in his stead. Baddeley gave one glance at the letter, and one at the ungainly, ill-dressed bearer of it. That a man who presented so unpromising an appearance should come offering to be his representative in the august precincts of the law irritated him beyond measure. He discharged a volley of abuse at the astonished Lincoln, paid his respects, in similar terms, to the absent Stuart, and straightway hired another lawyer, James A. McDougall, to defend the suit. What reply, if any, was made by the innocent object of all this wrath is not known. He endured it, we are told, however, without resentment; and later on, when these first unfavorable impressions had given place to warm appreciation, counted that very client among his stanchest admirers.[iv-45]

Nor was Baddeley the only one to be deceived by Lincoln’s unprepossessing garb. So keen an intellect as Edwin M. Stanton’s wholly misjudged him, many years thereafter, on the occasion of their first meeting at Cincinnati, in the famous McCormick versus Manny reaper case; and that, too, notwithstanding the eminent position which the Springfield lawyer had by that time attained among his professional brethren at home. For this critical associate could see no promise of forensic ability in the man, to whom he contemptuously referred as a “long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent.”[iv-46] Stanton’s disdainful treatment rankled in the gentle soul of Lincoln. He began, some time after the affair, to wear better clothes—better in texture if not in fit. But he never learned to take an interest in fine linen, or to spend on his person more than was necessary to satisfy the ordinary demands of society.

Thus much for the man’s simple habits. A lawyer whose immediate wants were, all in all, so moderate, certainly had no personal incentive—whatever may have been his standards of honesty—for any but upright methods in his practice. Like Manius Curius, over that historic dinner of turnips at the chimney-side, he prized honor with modest living above meretricious wealth and the luxuries it might buy.

To assume, however, that there were not numerous demands upon Lincoln for what money could procure, would be far from the fact. A kind husband and indulgent father, it distressed him to refuse his family anything. All their reasonable wants he did, in truth, cheerfully provide for, as she who knew him best bore affectionate testimony. And once, when he was contrasted in her presence with a certain well-favored rival, the little wife retorted: “Mr. Lincoln may not be as handsome a figure, but the people are perhaps not aware that his heart is as large as his arms are long.”

Still, there were many who had good reason to believe in such a consonance between length of limb and breadth of sympathy. Nor was their number limited, by any means, to those on whom, as we have seen, he conferred professional kindnesses. For others frequently felt the sustaining grip of that sinewy helping hand; and the hospitality dispensed in the modest little home made a lasting impression upon the circle of friends, who were favored from time to time with coveted invitations. Then, too, among the uses that Lincoln had for money must be reckoned those numberless little charities which are of the same blood as great and holy deeds. A typical instance, eloquent in its brevity, is supplied by a slip of paper, dated September 25, 1858. It reads:

With this scrap has been preserved the obvious sequel:—

Another generous act, of a different character, is gratefully recalled by an old resident of Springfield, Dr. William Jayne. He tells how the “Phi Alpha” Society at Illinois College, in Jacksonville, arranged a series of lectures, the profits from which were to be expended on books for the library. One of the lecturers during 1857 was Mr. Lincoln. On the night of his appearance, after his address had been delivered, and the rather meager audience had departed, he said, with a kindly smile, to the president of the society: “I have not made much money for you to-night.”

At which the young officer who was in charge of the finances interposed: “When we pay for rent of the hall, music, and advertising, and your compensation, there will not be much left to buy books for the library.”

“Well, boys,” replied Lincoln, “be hopeful. Pay me my railroad fare and fifty cents for my supper at the hotel, and we are square.”[iv-48]

The speaker’s benevolence on other occasions must have been carried to extremes; for partner Herndon was repeatedly heard to murmur his disapproval and a student in their office reports him as saying: “Lincoln wouldn’t have a dollar to bless himself with if some one else didn’t look out for him. He never can say ‘No’ to any one who puts up a poor mouth, but will hand out the last dollar he has, sometimes when he needs it himself, and needs it badly.”[iv-49]

This view was apparently shared by the plucky little woman at home. She doubtless had found, as many housekeepers have before and since, that money should be conserved, not alone because of what it procures for people, but still more because of what it saves them from. The proverbial “rainy day,” with its provident demands, was therefore frequently urged upon the attention of her open-handed helpmate without, however, appreciably modifying his habits in this regard. And when remonstrance became too insistent, he replied: “Cast thy bread upon the waters.”[iv-50]

That the lady preferred to make sure of bread upon the dining-room table is not surprising, nor should it be remembered to her discredit. Yet a certain characteristic little scene between the two may not be omitted here; for, trivial though it seems, the incident throws a vivid side-light upon this phase of Lincoln’s nature. The story was related to the author by John F. Mendonsa, now of Jacksonville, Illinois. His father Antonio, a poor immigrant, after arriving in Springfield sometimes did odd jobs for the Lincolns. As the older man could not speak English, he took the little son John with him to be his interpreter; and that boy never forgot the many kindnesses which he received from the master of the house. More than half a century has elapsed since then, yet among his most cherished recollections are these visits to Mr. Lincoln’s home.

Recalling the great man’s manner, Mr. Mendonsa writes: “He would invariably walk up to father, shake his hand most cordially, and utter some little pleasantry which I would interpret. This interpretation seemed to amuse him very much. In every way he was most considerate. If the day was hot, the maid was instructed to prepare cooling refreshments of some sort, and vice versa. Knowing our reduced circumstances, he would take me by the hand, after father had been paid, and place a quarter therein, saying, ‘Sonny, take this to your mother to buy meat for dinner.’ ”

The narrator goes on to say:—

“At one time, during an extremely hot summer, father, my brother-in-law, and I went to the woods for berries. It was in July, 1856, and the berry season was all but over. We got back to town at eleven A.M., having only three pints. My brother-in-law had two quarts. We took them to Lincoln’s. Mrs. Lincoln met us and asked what we wanted for the berries. Father thought they should be worth fifteen cents per quart, considering the scarcity of berries and the length of time consumed—from four A.M. until eleven. Mrs. Lincoln thought this price outrageously high, and said she would not pay more than ten cents. Father had me explain our long walk through the heat, but she was inexorable.

“We met Mr. Lincoln at the gate as we were leaving. He asked us what we had to sell. I told him, and he said, ‘Doesn’t Mrs. Lincoln want them?’ ‘Yes, sir, but she will only allow father ten cents per quart, and he feels they’re worth fifteen cents.’ He patted me on the head, smilingly and said, ‘Sonny, you tell your father we’ll take them.’ Mrs. Lincoln had joined us, and on hearing Mr. Lincoln’s remark, said, ‘No, we won’t have them. I won’t give that much for them.’ And when she was angry, she screamed what she had to say. Mr. Lincoln quietly said, ‘Mary, they have earned all they ask for them. Get me a pan in which to put them.’ She refused, saying, ‘No, I won’t! I won’t have them! I don’t want them!’ He then called to the maid. She brought a pan. He paid father twenty-five cents and brother-in-law thirty cents. He chatted awhile, and as he bade us good-bye, gave me a quarter, telling me to be a good boy.”[iv-51]

But Lincoln, like the skillful tactician that he was, usually contrived to avoid so violent a clashing of wills. His method, on one occasion at least, seems to have foreshadowed the diplomatic triumphs of later times. What happened is related by the Chevalier Henry Haynie, who lived in Springfield during the old days. He was torch-bearer to a volunteer fire-company which needed a new hose-cart. Making a canvass for subscriptions among the citizens of the town, young Haynie and a fellow member called upon Mr. Lincoln. That gentleman at once expressed his sympathy with the project, but thought it best, before setting down any amount, to consult “a certain little woman” about it. “I’ll do so, boys,” he continued, “when I go home to supper,—Mrs. Lincoln is always in a fine, good humor then,—and I’ll say to her—over the toast—‘My dear, there is a subscription paper being handed round to raise money to buy a new hose-cart. The committee called on me this afternoon, and I told them to wait until I consulted my home partner. Don’t you think I had better subscribe fifty dollars?’ Then she will look up quickly, and exclaim, ‘Oh, Abraham, Abraham! will you never learn, never learn? You are always too liberal, too generous! Fifty dollars! No, indeed; we can’t afford it. Twenty-five’s quite enough.’ ”

Mr. Lincoln chuckled, as he added: “Bless her dear soul, she’ll never find out how I got the better of her; and if she does, she will forgive me. Come around to-morrow, boys, and get your twenty-five dollars.”[iv-52]

Fallible human nature, viewing this man’s uncompromising truthfulness with perhaps a trace of chagrin, may derive some consolation from the thought that now and then, when domestic skies were overcast, even he sought refuge in equivocation. His sin, on one occasion at least, speedily found him out, as he himself confessed by means of the characteristically frank letter which follows:—