Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/298

 Legal Reminiscences.

269

There is no American life which is so found some difficulty in making selections full of encouragement to the young lawyer which would interest them, for they did not as that of our own, great Lincoln. To care for fiction of any description. They those familiar with it, it almost seems as it preferred American history. It occurred there was no form of adversity which he to her to try them with a chapter from was not compelled to fight and overcome. "The Recollections of Abraham Lincoln Many of them are familiar to his country and his Administration." That seemed to men, and yet there are some which should please her whole audience. They had not be hinted at, now. But he came through become so interested that she had read to them all pure, refined, illustrious, the peer them the entire book, and she was now of Washington, our great American, the reading it the second time. As Christmas best model for the young lawyer, one approached, they all wanted to send me a whose life has made our country the most little present by way of acknowledgment for the pleasure my book had given them. powerful upon the globe. I have recently had an evidence of the Accordingly each one had contributed out genuine, fervent love of our countrymen of his slender store a small sum, the aggre for the memory of Abraham Lincoln, which gate of which had purchased the accom your readers may regard as • pathetic. On panying picture. "It is not much to you," Christmas Day I received through the mail wrote this New England girl, " but it is a a small package, containing a photograph great deal to them, end if you could see the of Mr. Lincoln, in a very neat frame of tears in the sightless eyes of these poor old olive wood. It now stands on the mantle men, as they talk about Mr. Lincoln, I think before me, and is in fact the inspiration of you would appreciate their present*" The this article. With it was a letter from a young lady holds my acknowledgment for young lady, who resides not very far from the'present, and my assurance that among Boston. She lived near an Almshouse, the numerous letters and compliments which she wrote, in which there were nine poor the book has elicited, there is none so men, either totally or too nearly blind to touching — not one so valuable to me as distinguish letters. For a long time she this, which shows that I may have brought had devoted one afternoon in every week Mr. Lincoln nearer to these men, who to reading aloud to these men. She had cannot see his face.