Page:Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865.djvu/32

14 rather necessity, certainly not from any motive of self-adulation.

My personal acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln dates back to the autumn of 1847. In that year, attracted by glowing accounts of material growth and progress in that part of the West, I left my home in what was then Berkeley County, Virginia, and settled at Danville, Vermillion County, Illinois. That county and Sangamon, including Springfield, the new capital of the State, were embraced in the Eighth Judicial Circuit, which at that early day consisted of fourteen counties. It was then the custom of lawyers, like their brethren of England, "to ride the circuit." By that circumstance the people came in contact with all the lawyers in the circuit, and were enabled to note their distinguishing traits. I soon learned that the man most celebrated, even in those pioneer days, for oddity, originality, wit, ability, and eloquence in that region of the State was Abraham Lincoln. My great curiosity to see him was gratified soon after I took up my residence at Danville.

I was introduced to Mr. Lincoln by the Hon. John T. Stuart, for some years his partner at Springfield. After a comical survey of my fashionable toggery,—my swallow-tail coat, white neck-cloth, and ruffled shirt (an astonishing outfit for a young limb of the law in that settlement),—Mr. Lincoln said: "And so you are a cousin of our friend John J. Brown; he told me you were coming. Going to try your hand at the law, are you? I should know at a glance that you were a Virginian; but