Jasper saw young Lincoln among the people who had come to hear the great
lawyer's plea, and said to him:

"You have traveled a long distance to be here to-day."

"Yes," said the tall young man. "There is nothing that leads one to seek
information of the most intelligent people like a debating society. We,
who used to meet to discuss questions at Jones's store, have formed a
debating society, and I want to learn all I can of law for the sake of
justice, and I owed it to myself and the society not to let this great
occasion pass. I have walked fifteen miles to be here to-day. Did you
know that father was thinking of moving to Illinois?"

"No. Will you go with him?"

"Yes, I shall go with him and see him well settled, and then I shall
strike out for myself in the world. Father hasn't the faculty that
mother has, you know. I can do some things better than he, and it is the
duty of one member of the family to make up when he can for what another
member lacks. We all have our own gifts, and should share them with
others. I can split rails faster than father can, and do better work at
house-building than he, and I am going with him and do for him the best
I can at the start. I shall seek first for a roof for him, and then a
place for myself."

The great lawyer arrived. The doors of the court-house were open, and
the people filled the court-room.

The plea was a masterly one, eloquent and dramatic, and it thrilled the
young soul of Lincoln. Full of the subject, the young debater sought Mr.
Breckinridge after the court adjourned, and extended his long arm and
hand to him.

The orator was a proud man of an aristocratic family, and thought it the
proper thing to maintain his dignity on all occasions. He looked at the
boy haughtily, and refused to take his hand.

"I thank you," said Lincoln. "I wish to express my gratitude."

"Sir!"

With a contemptuous look Breckinridge passed by, and the slight filled
the heart of the young man with disappointment and mortification. The
two met again in Washington in 1862. The backwoods boy whose hand the
orator had refused to take had become President of the United States. He
extended his hand, and it was accepted.

"Sir," said the President, "that plea of yours in Boonesville, Indiana,
was one of the best that I ever heard."

"In Boonesville, Indiana?"

How like a dream to the haughty lawyer the recollection must have been!
Such things as this hurt Lincoln to the quick. He wa