“Now look here,” he said as Lincoln climbed back into the stage, “you can’t say that was a selfish act.”
“Yes, I can,” replied Lincoln. “It was extremely selfish. If I had left that little fellow sticking in the mud, it would have made me uncomfortable till I forgot it. That’s why I had to help him out.”
General Littlefield says that one day a client came in with a very profitable case for Lincoln. He told Lincoln his story. Lincoln listened a little while and his look went up to the ceiling in a very abstract way. Presently, he swung his chair around and said, “Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You’ll have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn’t do it. If I was talking to the jury in favor of your case, I’d all the time be thinking, ‘Lincoln, you’re a liar,’ and I believe I’d forget myself and say it out loud.”
Coleridge in his “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” might well have had Lincoln in mind when he wrote,
“Farewell! Farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small