Judge H. W. Beckwith, of Danville, Ill., in his “Personal Recollections
of Lincoln,” tells a story which is a good example of Lincoln’s way of
condensing the law and the facts of an issue in a story: “A man, by vile
words, first provoked and then made a bodily attack upon another. The
latter, in defending himself, gave the other much the worst of the
encounter. The aggressor, to get even, had the one who thrashed him
tried in our Circuit Court on a charge of an assault and battery. Mr.
Lincoln defended, and told the jury that his client was in the fix of
a man who, in going along the highway with a pitchfork on his shoulder,
was attacked by a fierce dog that ran out at him from a farmer’s
dooryard. In parrying off the brute with the fork, its prongs stuck into
the brute and killed him.
“‘What made you kill my dog?’ said the farmer.
“‘What made him try to bite me?’
“‘But why did you not go at him with the other end of the pitchfork?’
“‘Why did he not come after me with his other end?’
“At this Mr. Lincoln whirled about in his long arms an imaginary dog,
and pushed its tail end toward the jury. This was the defensive plea of
‘son assault demesne’--loosely, that ‘the other fellow brought on the
fight,’--quickly told, and in a way the dullest mind would grasp and
retain.”