“Billy, don’t shoot too high—aim lower, and the common people will understand you,” Lincoln once said to a brother lawyer.
“They are the ones you want to reach—at least, they are the ones you ought to reach.
“The educated and refined people will understand you, anyway. If you aim too high, your idea will go over the heads of the masses, and only hit those who need no hitting.”
NOT MUCH AT RAIL-SPLITTING.
One who afterward became one of Lincoln’s most devoted friends and adherents tells this story regarding the manner in which Lincoln received him when they met for the first time:
“After a comical survey of my fashionable toggery,—my swallow-tail coat, white neck-cloth, and ruffled shirt (an astonishing outfit for a young limb of the law in that settlement), Lincoln said:
“‘Going to try your hand at the law, are you? I should know at a glance that you were a Virginian; but I don’t think you would succeed at splitting rails. That was my occupation at your age, and I don’t think I have taken as much pleasure in anything else from that day to this.’”