This version of the affair seems hardly convincing. The verdict of the trial court was, it is true, accepted as final by the railroad officials; but they have left slender evidence on which to base the latter-day inference that the suit was a mere formality, framed up between friends to guard against the censure of non-resident directors. The company’s own exhibits, examined in the light of statements made by certain contemporary lawyers, lead one—with all candor be it said—to a contrary conclusion. Even the claim that amicable relations continued uninterrupted, and that Lincoln acted as counsel for the railroad in several important matters thereafter, loses its force when one remembers his peculiar sweetness of character. He might well have conducted the suit, in serious earnest, without losing his temper or his client.[iv-31] Indeed, it is difficult for us, after studying the man thus far, to conceive of him as really quarreling over a sum of money—large or small. And if, when enforcing the collection of perhaps his biggest fee, he managed to take a somewhat arrogant patron into court without snapping delicate professional ties, the feat should be explained, not by the fanciful surmise that there was no cause of irritation between them, but rather by the fact that he was—Lincoln.[iv-32]
This man, of all men, bringing suit to collect a disputed bill for his services, presents a spectacle which should be classed among the caprices of history. It would have seemed more natural, by far, had the plaintiff’s rôle in that action been filled by any one of the colleagues who certified to the fairness of the claim. Though hardly a mercenary bar, the lawyers of the Eighth Judicial Circuit were largely, as the phrase goes, alive to the main chance. Not a few of them at this period laid up competencies; while here and there an able practitioner managed to grow rich. The presiding judge himself, David Davis,—he who had lectured Lincoln on his “picayune charges,”—possessed the true Midas touch. Yet the ample fortune which was eventually credited to him, as indeed much of the wealth amassed by the others, may be traced back to activities and speculations outside the law. Such modes of money-getting held no attractions for Lincoln. His early misadventures in business had cured him of mercantile ambitions, and when friends presented alluring opportunities for profitable investments they were invariably declined. He might truly have replied as did Webster once, under similar circumstances: “Gentlemen, if you have any projects for money-making, I pray you keep me out of them. My singular destiny mars everything of that sort, and would be sure to overwhelm your own better fortunes.”
In Lincoln’s case, however, this unwillingness to seek revenues beyond the pale of the profession lay deeper than any mere question concerning profit or loss. The old-fashioned ideals, which debarred an advocate from pursuing any outside occupation of a gainful nature, had taken firm hold upon his convictions. Indeed, he carried to its extreme this aversion for hampering himself with whatever smacked of trade, going so far as to reject even the mint, anise, and cummin of related business that many able attorneys about him were glad to cull from adjacent fields. Accordingly, when some Springfield property had been levied upon, in a suit brought by Logan and Lincoln, for certain wholesale merchants at Louisville, the junior partner thus curtly dismissed a request of their clients that they collect the rents which might accrue: “As to the real estate, we cannot attend to it as agents, and we therefore recommend that you give the charge of it to Mr. Isaac S. Britton, a trustworthy man, and one whom the Lord made on purpose for such business.”[iv-33]
Yet the man who wrote those lines was in debt. His situation, generally speaking, must have been far from prosperous. At about this very period, we find him frankly giving poverty as the reason for declining an invitation to visit Joshua F. Speed, whom he very much desired to see again. That dear friend, happily married and domiciled in the South, had been sending insistent messages to which Lincoln finally replied: “I do not think I can come to Kentucky this season. I am so poor, and make so little headway in the world, that I drop back in a month of idleness as much as I gain in a year’s sowing.”[iv-34]
The writer—gaunt and grimly humorous—might well-nigh have gone as far as once did another threadbare limb of the law, who declared, “I am so poor, I do not make a shadow when the sun shines.” Indeed, to complete the traditional picture of a needy barrister, Lincoln apparently lacked but one thing—a family. And so he married. Within a few months after the writing of that lugubrious message, Mary Todd, a high-spirited, well-nurtured Kentucky lady, who was living with relatives in Springfield, became his wife. Their marriage ceremony, conducted by the Reverend Charles Dresser according to the ritual of the Episcopal Church, appears to have been somewhat of a novelty in Springfield at that time. Certainly one of the guests was taken off his guard when he heard it. For as the bridegroom repeated after the rector, in an impressive manner, the formula, “With this ring I thee endow with all my goods and chattels, lands and tenements,” Judge Thomas C. Browne, the Falstaff of the bench, standing close to the high contracting parties, exclaimed: “Good gracious, Lincoln, the statute fixes all that!”
This sage interruption was too much for the good minister’s sense of humor, and some moments elapsed before he could proceed.[iv-35] One wonders whether, on the under side of his merriment, there may not have frolicked a suspicion that, had rite or statute been invoked, then and there, in the bride’s behalf, she would have carried away but a slim endowment of worldly goods. On her part, moreover, the lady was apparently quite as poor as the man she married. For like many other wives whose mates have attained professional eminence, Mary Todd brought her husband no fortune to paralyze his industry.
The young couple would gladly have made a honeymoon journey to their native State and availed themselves of Speed’s now repeatedly offered hospitality; but again, poverty stood in the way. They were fain, therefore, to content themselves with a room at Mrs. Beck’s Globe Tavern, where the munificent sum of four dollars paid their whole bill, each week, for board and lodging. This frugal arrangement lasted somewhat more than a year, after which the birth of their first child necessitated a change.[iv-36] So they bought from the Reverend Mr. Dresser his frame cottage, on the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets, that was to serve them as a residence for the rest of their days in Springfield. It appears to have been a modest home among modest surroundings. Here the little family took root, here the problems of the growing household were worked out, and here Abraham Lincoln lived the simple life of an honest gentleman.[iv-37] His personal wants were few,—so few, in fact, as to make him almost seem rich. He had no expensive habits and one looks in vain for what cynics sometimes term redeeming vices. A man whose parents were, to quote one old settler, “torn-down poor,” does not enter upon life handicapped by a love of luxury. In Lincoln’s case the privations of earlier days had left him largely indifferent even to such creature comforts as the refinements of later times brought within reach. And though he rarely then referred to those trying backwoods experiences, the primitive ways instilled by them never quite got out of his system. Always in some degree a son of the soil, he consciously bore himself as belonging to “the plain people.” It was the plain mode of living, therefore, that appealed to him, not only because the more elegant customs were distasteful, but also because he felt keenly aware of how incongruous they would have been with his real self. Nor does the closest scrutiny reveal in all this any trace of affectation. The ostentatious display of poverty, on the one hand, and on the other, the vulgar mannerisms whereby our so-called self-made men sometimes make capital out of their lowly origins, were alike foreign to his nature. He was true here as elsewhere. In fact, when all is said, the man’s simplicity of life must be counted but one more expression of his inherent honesty.
Lincoln made it a practice to serve himself. He really disliked to have others wait upon his wants. Self-reliant in the extreme, to go for a thing came easier with him than to send for it; to do what was required seemed simpler than to order it done. He would walk to the house from the office for a document, though willing clerks were on hand eager to act as his messengers. If the open fire, at home or elsewhere, needed a fresh supply of fuel that did not happen to be promptly forthcoming, he took up the axe, shed his coat, and went vigorously to work over the woodpile. When a small stick was once wanted for some special purpose by a visitor at the Springfield residence, the master of the house fetched it after a brief session with his saw in the rear shed; and when a surprised comment ensued, Lincoln laughingly replied: “We’re not much used to servants about this place. Besides, you know, I have always been my own wood-sawyer.”[iv-38]
The speaker was so little used to servants, in fact, that even when latterly they were at hand, he often opened the front door for visitors himself. This habit keenly annoyed Mrs. Lincoln, particularly as his attire on these occasions appears not always to have conformed with the conventional requirements laid down by authorities on etiquette.
But once, when she was lamenting over certain social breaches of that kind, a member of her family said: “Mary, if I had a husband with a mind such as yours has, I wouldn’t care what he did.”