comparatively unknown to the country at large were soon to the front. Conspicuous among them was a country lawyer whose home was at Springfield, Illinois. With the mighty events soon to follow, his name is imperishably linked. But it is not of Lincoln the President, the emancipator, the martyr, we are now to speak. It is of Lincoln the country lawyer, as he stepped upon the arena of high debate, the unswerving antagonist of slavery extension half a century and more ago. His home, during his entire professional life, was at the capital of the State. He was, at the time mentioned, in general practice as a lawyer and a regular attendant upon the neighboring courts. His early opportunities for education were meagre indeed. He had been a student of men, rather than of books. He was, in the most expressive sense, "of the people,"--the people as they then were. For, "Know thou this, that men are as the time is." His training was, in large measure, under the severe conditions to be briefly mentioned. The old-time custom of "riding the circuit" is to the present generation of lawyers only a tradition. The few who remember central Illinois as it was sixty years ago will readily recall the full meaning of the expression. The district in which Mr. Lincoln practised extended from the counties of Livingston and Woodford upon the north, almost to the Indiana line--embracing the present cities of Danville, Springfield, and Bloomington. The last named was the home of the Hon. David Davis, the presiding judge of the district. As is well known, he was the intimate friend of Mr. Lincoln, and the latter was often his guest during attendance upon the courts at Bloomington. At that early day, the term of court in few of the counties continued longer than a week, so that much of the time of the judge and the lawyers who travelled the circuit with him was spent upon horseback. When it is remembered that there were then no railroads, but few bridges, a sparse population, and that more than half the area embraced in that district was unbroken prairie, the real significance of riding the circuit will fully appear. It was of this period that the late Governor Ford, speaking of Judge Young,--whose district extended from Quincy, upon the Mississippi River to Chicago,--said: "He possesses in rare degree one of the highest requisites for a good circuit judge, --he is an excellent horseback rider."