KENTUCKIANS ARE CLANNY.
Senator John C. S. Blackburn, of the United States Supreme Court, began his life as a lawyer at the age of twenty. This should have won him sympathy in his first case. It was before Justice McLean. Opposed to Mr. Blackburn was the chief of the Chicago bar, I. N. Arnold, afterward member of Congress, and author of the first biography of Abraham Lincoln. Blackburn was a Kentuckian, but the stereotyped reputation for courage does not include audacity in a court of law. He was nervous with this first attempt and made a mull of his presentment, when a gentleman of the bar, rising, and extending a tall, ungraceful figure, intervened and laid down the case on the young Kentuckian's lines so feebly offered and entangled that the hearers might be glad to be so disembarrassed of a feeling for the novice floundering. The bench sustained Blackburn's demurrer. Arnold was so vexed that he objected to the volunteer intervener, whereupon the befriended man learned it was one Abraham Lincoln, as unknown to him as he was to fame. Lincoln defended himself against the senior's spite, by saying he claimed the privilege of giving a newcomer the helping hand. No doubt the fellow Stateship backed his prompting. --(Related by Judge Isaac N. Arnold, member of Congress.)