Every man must be judged by the standards of his time. People of elegance and refinement, according to the standards of the Elizabethan age, listened to comedies which were considered in good taste then, but which would not be tolerated in any decent community now. The manners of the West and of the rural South in Mr. Lincoln’s day, were quite different from what they are now. Even now, however, there are men who call themselves gentlemen, and women who think they are ladies, that make a specialty of cultivating a talent for the relation of doubtful stories. The fact that Mr. Lincoln let his gift of entertainment and his fondness for the humorous lead him down to the low plane of his audience does not by any means indicate a defect of heart or mind. As a lawyer and as a politician, it was a part of his business to cultivate popularity. He made friends in just such circles as that into which Mr. Tibbles walked. The men who laughed with Mr. Lincoln, enjoying the inimitable way in which he related anecdotes, naturally warmed to him, and they gave him verdicts and votes. Mr. P. D. Ross, Editor of the Ottawa (Canada) _National_, claims that Mr. Lincoln was “The greatest man the world has produced”, and the editor of _Harper’s Weekly_ soberly falls into line. Well, there should be some standard by which one is enabled to measure a man’s greatness. Mr. Lincoln was a lawyer, a statesman, and a chief magistrate of a republic. In each of these capacities let us see what was his rank. Does any one claim that he was the greatest lawyer that ever lived? Surely not. There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Lincoln was a famous verdict getter. He could do about as much with a jury as any advocate in the West, but he certainly never won any court house victories that were more famous than those of Dan Voorhees, Emory Storrs, Bob Ingersoll, Matt Carpenter, Sargent Prentiss, Robert Toombs and of scores of other lawyers who could easily be named. In knowledge of the law, force of mental power of the judicial sort,—such as Chief Justice John Marshall and Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate had,—does anybody for a moment claim that Mr. Lincoln out-ranks all other lawyers? Surely not. He is not to be named in the same class as Reverdy Johnson, Jeremiah Black, or Senator Edmunds, Charles O’Connor,—to say nothing of Jeremiah Mason, of Massachusetts, and Luther Martin, of Maryland, William Pinckney, of the same State, and Edmund Randolph, of Virginia.