morrow, they would sit in the public room, or carry their chairs
out on the sidewalk in front, exchanging stories and anecdotes,
or pieces of political wisdom, while men from the town and
surrounding farms, dropping in on one pretext or another, found
excuse to linger and join in the talk. At meal-times the judge
presided at the head of the long hotel table, on which the food
was abundant if not always wholesome, and around which lawyers,
jurors, witnesses, prisoners out on bail, and the men who drove
the teams, gathered in friendly equality. Stories of what Mr.
Lincoln did and said on the eighth judicial circuit are still
quoted almost with the force of law; for in this close
companionship men came to know each other thoroughly, and were
judged at their true value professionally, as well as for their
power to entertain.

It was only in worldly wealth that Lincoln was poor. He could
hold his own with the best on the eighth judicial circuit, or
anywhere else in the State. He made friends wherever he went. In
politics, in daily conversation, in his work as a lawyer, his
life was gradually broadening. Slowly but surely, too, his gifts
as an attractive public speaker were becoming known. In 1837 he
wrote and delivered an able address before the Young Men's Lyceum
of Springfield. In December, 1839, Stephen A. Douglas, the most
brilliant of the young Democrats then in Springfield, challenged
the young Whigs of the town to a tournament of political
speech-making, in which Lincoln bore a full and successful share.

The man who could not pay a week's board bill was again elected
to the legislature, was invited to public banquets and toasted by
name, became a popular speaker, moved in the best society of the