the time he was through Lincoln was missing. The court sent for him to
the hotel. 'Tell the Judge,' said he, 'that I can't come; my hands are
dirty and I came over to clean them.'"(11)

"Discourage litigation," he wrote. "Persuade your neighbors to
compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner
is often a real loser, in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a
peacemaker, the lawyer has a Superior Opportunity of being a good man.
There will still be business enough."(12)

He held his moral and professional views with the same inflexibility
with which he held his political views. Once he had settled upon a
conviction or an opinion, nothing could move him. He was singularly
stubborn, and yet, in all the minor matters of life, in all his merely
personal concerns, in everything except his basal ideas, he was pliable
to a degree. He could be talked into almost any concession of interest.
He once told Herndon he thanked God that he had not been born a woman
because he found it so hard to refuse any request made of him. His
outer easiness, his lack of self-assertion,--as most people understand
self-assertion,--persist in an amusing group of anecdotes of the
circuit. Though he was a favorite with the company at every tavern,
those little demagogues, the tavern-keepers, quickly found out that
he could be safely put upon. In the minute but important favoritism
of tavern life, in the choice of rooms, in the assignment of seats at
table, in the distribution of delicacies, easy-going Lincoln was ever
the first one to be ignored. "He never complained of the food, bed, or
lodgings," says a judge of the circuit, David Davis. "If every other
fellow grumbled at the bill of fare which greeted us at many of the
dingy taverns, Lincoln said nothing."(13)