_ defend him, and the man was
acquitted. When proffered his share of the large fee Lincoln most
emphatically declined it, on the ground that "all of it belonged to Mr.
Swett, whose ardor and eloquence saved a _guilty_ man from
justice."

At another time, when a would-be client had stated the facts of his
case, Mr. Lincoln replied: "Yes; there is no reasonable doubt but I can
gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads.
I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and
thereby get for you $600, which rightfully belongs, it seems to me, as
much to the woman and her children as it does to you. You must remember
that some things that are _legally_ right are not _morally_
right. I shall not take your case, but will give you a little advice,
for which I will charge you nothing. You appear to be a sprightly,
energetic man: I would advise you to try your hand at making $600 some
other way."

I turn now to another phase of his nature, and recall that he had not
grown up to manhood without the usual experiences of the tender passion.
It was while he was yet living at New Salem that his heart opened to a
fair, sweet-tempered, and intelligent girl, with the romantic name of
Anne Rutledge. They were engaged to be married as soon as he should be
admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court. But in August, 1835, she died.
Her beauty and her attractions and her early death made a very deep
impression upon him. We are told that he idealized her memory, and in
his recollections of her there was a poetry of sentiment, which might
possibly have been lessened, had she lived, by the prosaic realities of
life. With all his love of fun and frolic, with all his wit and humor,
with all his laughter and anecdotes, Lincoln, from his youth, was a man
of deep feeling. We have it on the authority of the most reliable of his
biographers, that he always associated with the memory of Anne Rutledge
the poem which, in his hours of despondency, he so often repeated:--

"Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

"The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie."

I never read this beautiful poem, so full