Senator John C. S. Blackburn, of the United States Supreme Court, began
his life as a lawyer at the age of twenty. This should have won him
sympathy in his first case. It was before Justice McLean. Opposed to
Mr. Blackburn was the chief of the Chicago bar, I. N. Arnold, afterward
member of Congress, and author of the first biography of Abraham
Lincoln. Blackburn was a Kentuckian, but the stereotyped reputation for
courage does not include audacity in a court of law. He was nervous
with this first attempt and made a mull of his presentment, when a
gentleman of the bar, rising, and extending a tall, ungraceful figure,
intervened and laid down the case on the young Kentuckian's lines so
feebly offered and entangled that the hearers might be glad to be so
disembarrassed of a feeling for the novice floundering. The bench
sustained Blackburn's demurrer. Arnold was so vexed that he objected to
the volunteer intervener, whereupon the befriended man learned it was
one Abraham Lincoln, as unknown to him as he was to fame. Lincoln
defended himself against the senior's spite, by saying he claimed the
privilege of giving a newcomer the helping hand. No doubt the fellow
Stateship backed his prompting. --(Related by Judge Isaac N. Arnold,
member of Congress.)
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