This text is part of:
[313]
usually left to me for the first few years we were together.
Afterwards we made good use of students who came to learn the law in our office.
A Chicago lawyer,1 in a letter to me about Mr. Lincoln, in 1866, says: “Lincoln once told me that he had taken you in as a partner, supposing you had system and would keep things in order, but that he found out you had no more system than he had, but that you were in reality a good lawyer, so that he was doubly disappointed.”
Lincoln knew no such thing as order or method in his law practice.
He made no preparation in advance, but trusted to the hour for its inspiration and to Providence for his supplies.
In the matter of letter-writing2 he made no distinction between one of a business nature or any other kind.
If a happy thought of expression struck him he was by no means reluctant to use it. As early as 1839 he wrote to a gentleman
1 W. C. Whitney, Ms.
2 “I wish you would learn of Everett what he would take, over and above a discharge, for all trouble we have been at to take his business out of our hands and give it to somebody else. It is impossible to collect money on that or any other claim here, now, and although you know I am not a very petulant man, I declare that I am almost out of patience with Mr. Everett's endless importunities. It seems like he not only writes all the letters he can himself, but he gets everybody else in Louisville and vicinity to be constantly writing to us about his claim. I have always said that Mr. Everett is a very clever fellow, and I am very sorry he cannot be obliged; but it does seem to me he ought to know we are interested to collect his claim, and therefore would do it if we could. I am neither joking nor in a pet when I say we would thank him to transfer his business to some other, without any compensation for what we have done, provided he will see the court costs paid for which we are security.” --Ms. letter to Joshua F. Speed, March 27, 1842.
The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.