, chiefly
those connected with the bar.

I knew Judge David Davis very well. He was Circuit Judge on our
State circuit for a number of years, and until Mr. Lincoln became
President, when he was made Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States. When a young lawyer Davis was a Whig; and
my father, being also a Whig, took a great interest in him, as he
did in every young lawyer he knew who became affiliated with that
party. My father thought himself justified in believing that Davis
would become a power in the land. Hence he took up the young man
soon after he had settled in the practice of the law at Bloomington;
and I have heard him state that he gave Davis the first case he
ever had in Tazewell County, by advising another to employ him.
But he re-enacted, on the less conspicuous forum, the distressing
experience of failure of Disraeli in his first attempt to address
the English House of Commons. Davis broke down in the speech he
had prepared to make, to the great mortification of my father, who
had exhibited such unusual pride and confidence as to counsel his
employment in the case. Subsequently Davis redeemed himself, as
did Disraeli, and became a most prominent and successful lawyer.

Among other interesting circumstances of his career was that of a
little claim he had for a client in Boston against a merchant in
Chicago. He could not collect the debt, except by levying on a
tract of land in Chicago--eighty acres, I think. Davis reported
what he had done, and his client manifested dissatisfaction with
the result. He so vigorously stated his disappointment to Davis,
that the latter immediately redeemed the land by taking it himself
and paying the amount of money due the client. This tract grew in
value with the growth of Chicago until it became worth a million
dollars or more.

Judge Davis was a remarkably popular man on his circuit. He was
thoroughly honest, and could not endure a dishonest man on the
witness-stand or anywhere else. I remember a man in Chicago who
on one occasion filed a bill of discovery for the purpose of finding
real estate that he seemed once to have had an interest in, and
which also involved the insertion of Judge Davis's own name, since
he had himself at one time owned the tract of land involved. The
man had lost his voice to a considerable extent, so that he had
come to be called "Whispering Smith." He became notorious as a
successful collector of debts, wher