entailed so much disaster on the State. It was during the following session that Lincoln placed on record his first protest against slavery. His protest gave but a feeble sound, and only one other member was found bold enough to subscribe it. Daniel Stone and Abraham Lincoln believed the institution of slavery to be founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of Abolition doctrines tended rather to increase than abate its evils.

Lincoln had not forgotten his professional career.

In 1837

he joined Mr. John T. Stuart as partner in his law office at Springfield. He received his licence as attorney in March of that year, and began at last regular practice as a lawyer in the twenty-seventh year of his age. Springfield had just been appointed the capital of Illinois by the State Legislature; and in that town the State courts of law were held; while the circuit and district courts of the United States also sat there. Lincoln could thus attend to his professional business and to his duties as legislator at once and in comfort. The position of a lawyer practising in Illinois, in 1837, was vastly different from the grave and reverend position of an English barrister. Springfield was an ill-paved, chaotic village of two or three thousand inhabitants; the office of Stuart and Lincoln was a dirty little room above the court, which was held in a hired apartment in Hoffman's Row. No very deep knowledge of law was required to qualify a man for a licence for practice; and, indeed, Abraham Lincoln never knew very much. He relied chiefly on his knowledge of cases and precedents, and his clear-headed power of expounding the equities of a cause; and therefore it was that, unless himself convinced absolutely of the right being on his side, he made but a poor appearance in court.

It is always unprofessional and injudicious thus to prejudge a case; and more than once, after Lincoln had thrown up his brief, his successor in it obtained a verdict. Life in Springfield was somewhat unceremonious. Men lounged about in the stores and offices, chatting and smoking, and discussing politics. Their language was often too forcible to be polite; and they had a knack of resorting to physical arguments when the disputed points had been talked out. It was not beneath the dignity of Lincoln to participate in such society; and the rough, not too clean, morally or physically, Philistine life in Springfield seemed not uncongenial to the future President. As a lawyer he soon gained cons deration and respect among his legal brethren and from the bench. The circuit to which he attached himself embraced fourteen counties; and, in the absence of railways, the lawyers drove from place to place in buggies, or rode on horseback. Lincoln was the life and spirit of the circuit; and when he was absent, there was a palpable depression over all. On December 3, 1839, he was admitted to practice in the United States Circuit Court. His first case there was conducted in an original and characteristic way. He simply submitted to the notice of the court all the cases bearing on the disputed point; pointed out that they were all in favour of his opponent; and then left the case to the decision of the court. On another occasion he was engaged to defend a murderer. On hearing the evidence, Lincoln was unable to defend him, and left the case to his colleague, absolutely refusing to touch a penny of the large fee obtained for the acquittal which followed. In another case Lincoln had proved an account for a dishonest client; the opposing counsel conclusively disproved the whole grounds of action of Lincoln's client. Lincoln at

once left the court, and when the judge sent for him to his hotel, he replied, 'Tell the judge I can't come; my hands are dirty, and I came over to clean them.' Another anecdote is contributed by Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's partner from 1845. A client had just stated his case to Lincoln, who thereupon replied, 'Yes, there is no reasonable doubt but I can gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighbourhood at loggerheads; I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you 600 dollars, which, it appears to me, rightfully belongs as much to the woman and her children as it does to you. You must remember that some things that are legally right are not morally right. I shall not take your case, but will give you a little advice, for which I will charge you nothing. You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try your hand at making 600 dollars in some other way.' Lincoln hated a purely litigious case; and always tried to effect a compromise when possible. He was exceedingly moderate in his fees; 5000 dollars was the largest single fee he ever obtained; and frequently he let off his poorer clients for nothing, or nearly nothing. He was particularly successful with juries; he had a direct manner of treating them that pleased them. In one case, cited by Leland, thirty-four witnesses had appeared and sworn on each side. Mr. Lincoln proposed a very practical test to the jury. If you were going to bet on this case,' he said, 'on which side would you lay a picayune?' An infamous law forbade at one time any free man of colour to set foot in Louisiana. A poor negro, in ignorance, had landed at New Orleans, and, being unable to pay his fine, was about to be sold as a slave. His poor mother applied to Lincoln in her distress.

He did all he could by law without avail; and so,

rather than suffer such cruel injustice to take place, he and his partner, out of their own pockets, ransomed the unfortunate negro.

The limited politics of a single State now began to prove too narrow a field for Lincoln's energetic and ambitious spirit; and from about 1837 he began to look toward the region of Federal politics. But before he entered on that sphere, an important event occurred in his domestic life. This was nothing else than his meeting with the lady who was afterwards to become Mrs. Lincoln. Abraham's attitude towards women had always been peculiar. When a longlegged boy at school he had felt the tender passion, or the schoolboy's substitute for it; and had prompted the object of his affections in the class. As he grew older he doubtless found his awkward, ill-dressed figure a barrier to his making serious advances in ladies' favour; and was fain to content himself with being a general favourite in an indefinite way. But before this date he had already had two serious love affairs; and the unhappy issue of one had well-nigh reduced him to lunacy. Even after he had become engaged to Miss Mary Todd, his future wife, in 1839, the propinquity for a time of another belle produced a short aberration that incapacitated him for public duties. But probably the real truth about Abraham Lincoln is, that his life was too entirely absorbed by his political ambitions to allow him to cherish any very devoted or self-sacrificing affection. He probably loved his wife; and she, at any rate, respected his great talents. Their union did not, perhaps, produce a very bright or warm home-life; but they suited each other, and lived contentedly enough. Miss Todd was Miss Todd was a clever and witty

young lady, of higher social position than her gaunt wooer.

But she was ambitious; and she married Lincoln in the full conviction that one day she would be a President's wife. She used to contribute satirical articles to the newspapers before her marriage; and some of these so enraged an Irishman of the name of Shields, that he sent a challenge to Abraham Lincoln, who had been indicated as the real author. The latter accepted it; and a duel was only prevented by the exertions of some mutual friends. Lincoln married Miss Todd on November 4, 1842; and began his modest -housekeeping in rooms at the Globe Tavern in Springfield, where he paid for their united board and lodging the modest sum of 4 dollars (16s.) a week.

In 1840 Lincoln had been an unsuccessful candidate for the office of Presidential elector in support of Harrison; and till 1846 he suffered a temporary political eclipse. He did not, however, allow himself to fall entirely out of sight. While he worked hard at the bar, he also spoke now and again on political subjects and on political occasions. In 1846 he was the sole nominee of the Whigs as their representative in Congress; and he easily defeated his Democrat opponent. He took his seat in the thirtieth Congress, December 6, 1847, as the only Whig from Illinois. He became a member of committee on post-offices and post-roads; and his first speech in Congress was in connection with that office. 'I find,' he writes to a friend two or three days after, 'speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court.' The burning question of the time was the Mexican war. Lincoln was keenly opposed to the war, and thoroughly hostile to President Polk. He declared that the latter had begun the war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally; while, at the same time,