Why He Stopped

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 13, 1910

In the early pioneer days, when Mr. Lincoln was a practising attorney and “rode the circuit,” as was the custom at that time, he made one of a party of horsemen, lawyers like himself, who were on their way one spring morning from one court town to another. Their course lay across the prairies and through the timber, and as they passed by a little grove where the birds were singing merrily, they noticed a little fledgling which had fallen from the nest and was fluttering by the roadside. After they had ridden a short distance, Mr. Lincoln stopped, and, wheeling his horse, said: “Wait for me a moment. I will soon rejoin you;” and as the party halted and watched him, they saw Mr. Lincoln return to the place where the little bird lay helpless on the ground, saw him take it up tenderly and set it carefully on a limb near the nest. When he joined his companions, one of them laughingly said: “Why, Lincoln, what did you bother yourself and delay us for, with such a trifle as that?” The reply deserves to be remembered, and it is for this that I have told the story. “My friend,” said Mr. Lincoln, “I can only say this, that I feel better for it.”—Selected.