Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/355

 The Editor's Bag be less apt to be encountered where it is undeserved and is not the consequence

of lax standards of professional conduct. A circumstance which undoubtedly menaces the well-being of the profession as a whole, and of the entire community,

is the concentration of legal business in the hands of a small proportion of prac titioners.

Petty actions which might

325

ministration of justice and have a perni cious effect on the profession as a whole. The profession will then offer better prospects of advancement to deserving beginners and the premium at present

placed on questionable methods will be removed.

"A. LINCOLN.

'

MARCH 7, 1832"

often with advantage to the client be entrusted to the younger struggling mem

5

time passes and the distance widens between the present and

bers of the profession, are snapped up by large ﬁrms which have not the facilities for giving them proper attention. When one of these cases is called in court the lawyer having it in charge often has a more important case which demands

son we venture the following narrative,

his attention elsewhere, and the result is

vouching for nothing except that the

that requests for adjournments are so frequent as to be an intolerable nuisance and to furnish one of the chief factors in the law's delays. The courts have formed the habit of too frequently, without proper excuse, yielding to these requests. Were our judges to refuse to grant adjournments except for adequate cause, and to compel the parties to proceed with their trial or suﬂer judgment to be entered by default, the business of the courts would be immeasurably hastened,

and the client would soon be able to look for a prompt adjudication of the matter in controversy. He would soon learn to give his case only to a lawyer

in a position to handle it promptly and eﬁiciently, and the result would be a wholesome diffusion of legal business which would beneﬁt the entire profes sion. The evil of an overcrowded profession

the closing years of the Great Emanci pator's life, few incidents are so insigniﬁ

cant, touching that life, as to be without public interest. For this rea

men who made the discovery named are

well known and thoroughly reliable per sons.

The log with its inscription can

answer for itself. A man by the name of Morgan —— Wil liam Morgan — living at Osbernville,

Illinois, a little town ﬁfteen miles south west of Decatur, the city, by the way, in

which was held the state convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln for the presi dency, recently brought to the cus todian of the State Historical Library,

a section of red-elm log, measuring some twenty inches in length, and bearing on one side of it the following inscrip tion:— “A. Lincoln.

March 7, 1832."

The log was discovered more than a year ago in a pile of drift in the Sanga mon river, and that the name and date

carved upon it were carved by Lincoln, there seems to be but little doubt among

is not in itself serious, so long as it does

those personally familiar with the his

not engender other and greater evils. By more effective organized effort, on the part both of the bench and of the bar, it seems to us that it is reasonable

tory of Mr. Lincoln's early life and habits. It is recalled by these men that Lincoln was quite as much given, in those earlier days, to the inscription of

to hope for the suppression of these secondary evils which obstruct the ad

his name, here and there, as he was in later years to sitting for his picture;