This conversation had attracted the attention of the lawyers and the court. Judge David Davis, then on our circuit bench, called Mr. Lincoln to him. The judge never could whisper, but in this instance he probably did his best. At all events, in attempting to whisper to Mr. Lincoln he trumpeted his rebuke in about these words, and in rasping tones that could be heard all over the court room: "Lincoln, I have been watching you and Lamon. You are impoverishing this bar by your picayune charges of fees, and the lawyers have reason to complain of you. You are now almost as poor as Lazarus, and if you don't make people pay you more for your services you will die as poor as Job's turkey!" Judge O. L. Davis, the leading lawyer in that part of the State, promptly applauded this malediction from the bench; but Mr. Lincoln was immovable. "That money," said he, "comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl, and I would rather starve than swindle her in this manner." That evening the lawyers got together and tried Mr. Lincoln before a moot tribunal called "The Ogmathorial Court." He was found guilty and fined for his awful crime against the pockets of his brethren of the bar. The fine he paid with great good humor, and then kept the crowd of lawyers in uproarious laughter until after midnight. He persisted in his revolt, however, declaring that with his consent his firm should never during its life, or after its dissolution, deserve the reputation enjoyed by those shining lights of the profession, "Catch 'em and Cheat 'em." In these early days Mr. Lincoln was once employed in a case against a railroad company in Illinois. The case was concluded in his favor, except as to the pronouncement of judgment. Before this was done, he rose and stated that his opponents had not proved all that was justly due to them in offset, and proceeded to state briefly that justice required that an allowance should be made against his client for a certain amount. The court at once acquiesced in his statement, and immediately proceeded to pronounce judgment in accordance therewith. He was ever ready to sink his selfish love of victory as well as his partiality for his client's favor and interest for the sake of exact justice. In many of the courts on the circuit Mr. Lincoln would be engaged on one side or the other of every case on the docket, and yet, owing to his low charges and the large amount of professional work which he did for nothing, at the time he left Springfield for Washington to take the oath of office as President of the United States he was not worth more than seven thousand dollars,--his property consisting of the house in which he had lived, and eighty acres of land on the opposite side of the river from Omaha, Neb. This land he had entered with his bounty land-warrant obtained for services in the Black Hawk War.[1] [1] Page 20, line 21, after the word "war." Mr. Lincoln did not think money for its own sake a fit object of any man's ambition.