honesty and kindness ever distinguishing him.  In his boyhood, among boys, he was always fighting the battle of the offended and the weak; in manhood, he was always protecting the fugitive from an angry mob; as a lawyer, saving the widow’s son from the gallows, and declining the rich fee of an unrighteous cause; as a public debater, the fairest ever met in the political arena; and as president of the republic, honest in his convictions and kind to his bitterest enemies.

Let us not forget the difficulties which it was his lot and his good fortune to surmount.  He never was six months at school in his life; and yet, by the use of a single book and the occasional aid of a village schoolmaster, he became an expert surveyor in six weeks!  At the age of twenty-one he accompanied his family to Illinois.  One morning, when seated at the breakfast-table of his employer, Lincoln was told that a man living six miles away had a copy of an English grammar.  He left the table at once, and went and borrowed the book.  During the long winter evenings that followed, in the light of the village cooper’s shop, he pored over the pages of that book,—­studying the science of language, the theory of human speech, and qualifying himself to become the author of one of the three great State papers of modern times, by the light of burning shavings!

But we leave that early life of his, which, in rude simplicity, repeats “the short and simple annals of the poor.”

In 1832 Black Hawk, the celebrated Indian chief, then in his sixty-seventh year, crossed the Mississippi to regain the Rock River valley,—­the scene of his early trials and triumphs.  His coming meant war upon the pale-faced stranger, that had ventured to possess the hunting-grounds of the red men.  Several companies of volunteers were raised to meet him, and Abraham Lincoln served as captain of one of them.

When the war was over Lincoln returned to New Salem, his home in Illinois, and shortly afterwards began the study of the law.  He was still poor in purse, his clothing was threadbare, but his ambition was immense.  He often pursued his study in the shade of a tree.  One day Squire Godbey—­a very good man he was, too, so we are told—­saw him seated on a pile of wood, absorbed in a book, when, according to the squire, the following dialogue took place:  “Says I, ’Abe, what are you studying?’—­’Law,’ says he.  ‘Great God Almighty!’ says I.”  Studying law astride of a wood-pile, probably barefooted, was too great a shock for the squire’s susceptible nature.  He continued to study, then to practise a little without fee, and finally was admitted to the bar in 1836.

Judge Davis, once on the Supreme Bench of the United States, a man spotless alike upon the throne of justice and in his daily walk, was upon intimate terms with Lincoln for upwards of twenty years, and during more than half of that period sat upon the judicial bench before which Lincoln most frequently practised.  No one is abler than he to speak of Lincoln as a lawyer,—­a lawyer who became one of the first of the Western bar,—­a bar that can proudly point to its Carpenter, its Trumbull, its Ryan, and its Davis.  He says:—­