In another instance Lincoln started in with a case believing his client innocent, then he reached the belief that the man was guilty. Turning to his associates in the case, he said, "Sweet, this man is guilty. You defend him. I can't." The large fee in the case was forfeited, but his self-respect, that nobility which carried him through many great dark hours, was saved. Once, when out with his lawyer-companions, he climbed a tree, searching for a bird's nest, out of which two fledgelings had fallen. His companions made sport of him for giving so much time and work to such worthless things, but he exclaimed with such genuine feeling as to silence them, "I could not have gone to sleep in peace if I had not restored those little birds to their mother." Lincoln liked to argue, and, to pass the time in a certain stage-coach ride, he was arguing that every act, no matter how kind, was always prompted by a selfish motive. About this time the stage passed a ditch in which a pig was stuck fast in the mud. Lincoln asked the driver to stop. He then jumped out and rescued the pig. The passenger with whom Lincoln had been arguing thought that he now had proof for his own side of the case. "Now look here," he said as Lincoln climbed back into the stage, "you can't say that was a selfish act." "Yes, I can," replied Lincoln. "It was extremely selfish. If I had left that little fellow sticking in the mud, it would have made me uncomfortable till I forgot it. That's why I had to help him out." General Littlefield says that one day a client came in with a very profitable case for Lincoln. He told Lincoln his story. Lincoln listened a little while and his look went up to the ceiling in a very abstract way. Presently, he swung his chair around and said, "Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You'll have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn't do it. If I was talking to the jury in favor of your case, I'd all the time be thinking, 'Lincoln, you're a liar,' and I believe I'd forget myself and say it out loud." Coleridge in his "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" might well have had Lincoln in mind when he wrote, "Farewell! Farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou wedding guest! He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. "He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all." That was Lincoln's religion, to love his fellow-men and his country. In the turmoil of wrongs infesting the confusions that were bewildering all minds at the close of the Civil War, all now know that both North and South lost the noblest and most valued friend, the ablest and wisest restorer, anywhere to be found in all the vast regions of pain. CHAPTER VI I. HELPFULNESS AND KINDNESS OF A WORTH-WHILE CHARACTER