The melancholy which increased after Ann Rutledge's death, however, is but one side of as enigmatical a character as is known to history. If the great President is ever to be understood as a man, it must be by reconciling wonderful sanity with vagaries almost insane, and it is the wilder and queerer side of his nature that comes to the front for several years after Ann's death. A woman named Mary S. Owens, who had visited. New Salem in 1833, returned in 1836. The story of her relation to Lincoln rests mostly on her own evidence, but letters from him are sufficient to give it a singular importance in any attempt to see him intimately. This lady was the object of Lincoln's interest, but she thought him "deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman's happiness." She also says, "I thought him lacking in smaller attentions." As a party of friends were riding on horseback one day he failed to draw aside the branch of a tree which the other men had removed for their women companions. Mary remonstrated, and her cavalier replied that he knew she was plenty smart to take care of herself. The rest of the story belongs to a slightly later period.

During this year Lincoln was again a candidate for the legislature. His first important step was the following:

"NEW SALEM, June 13, 1863.

"TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL: In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the signature of Many voters' in which the candidates who are announced in the Journal are called upon to 'show their hands.' Agreed. Here's mine:

"I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

"If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.

"While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of public lands to the several states to enable our state, in common with others, to dig canals and construct railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on it.

"If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White, for President.

"Very respectfully,

"A. LINCOLN.”

One story of this campaign shows Lincoln's already noticeable political adroitness. One Forquer, who had put on his house the only lightning-rod in Springfield, and the first Lin

coln and most of his hearers had ever seen, answered one of the campaign speeches of the candidate from New Salem. Lincoln in his reply said:

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Mr. Forquer commenced his speech by announcing that the young man would have to be taken down. It is for you, fellow-citizens, not for me, to say whether I am up or down. The gentleman has seen fit to allude to my being a young man; but he forgets that I am older in years than I am in the tricks and trades of politicians. I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction; but I would rather die now, than, like the gentleman, live to see the day that I would change my politics for an office worth three thousand dollars a year, and then feel compelled to erect a lightning-rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God."

Lincoln was elected, and his record was much more prominent than it had been during his first term. The three things he proved were that he was a very adroit politician, that he shared a financial insanity which just then pervaded the state, and that he had convictions on slavery. His political address was shown in his leading position among the delegates from his district, called the "Long Nine," from the height of all the members, and its recogni

tion was proved by the fact that a great scheme of that body, the removal of the capital, was left to his engineering. The removal for Vandalia was settled, and Alton, Decatur, Peoria, Jacksonville, and Illiopolis sought the honor. The Long Nine, however, by giving their support to other bills only in return for votes for Springfield, conquered. This success led to complimentary dinners and meetings, and among the toasts were these:

"Abraham Lincoln: He has fulfilled the expectations of his friends, and disappointed the hopes of his enemies."

“A. Lincoln: One of Nature's noblemen."

The interest of the statesmen during this session, however, was mainly taken up with a grand scheme for the manufacture of an Illinois boom. Chicago had started on her meteoric career, and the legislators were drunk with the idea of giving the whole state a similar experience. They planned a canal from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and railroads between numerous cities, some of which owed their existence only to maps. Thirteen hundred and fifty miles of rail were thus arranged for. Every stream in the state was to be improved. Unfortunately there were a few

neighborhoods which had no rivers and were not included in the railroad system, but the open-handed Solons met this difficulty by voting $200,000 to be divided among these places. To carry out the rest of the plan they voted the perfectly inadequate sums of $8,000,000 for railroads and $4,000,000 for the canal. Lincoln was on the committee on finance. In the consequences of these dreams he shared at a later session. The frenzy was almost universal, and Stephen A. Douglas was among the most enthusiastic.

As far as Lincoln's career was concerned, however, his most important act was one which passed almost unnoticed, a protest entered March 3, the day before the legislature adjourned. The sentiment in favor of slavery in Illinois, which was peopled largely by settlers from Southern states, had always been considerable. After the separation of Illinois from Indiana, it kept the Indiana act which authorized a sort of slavery by indenture. A serious attempt to open the state to slavery had been made by the legislature no later than the session of 1822-23, and public opinion was very hostile to abolitionists, who were looked upon as pretentious Eastern cranks. It was not the easiest course to take any positive stand on the question, and when Lincoln made this protest the