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that brain by a bodily frame of the most extraordinary power and by a will of iron-had once more been swept into temporary ruin as by a hurricane of passionate sorrow. His discovery was that all the heart and love he had, or ever could have, lay buried on the bank of the Sangamon, in the grave of Ann Rutledge.

Lincoln was positively demented-morbidly, gloomily insane. He was equally unfit for marriage, for society, for business. Once more he was indebted to a faithful friend for the care and watching he stood in need of. He never had one wiser and more true than Mr. J. F. Speed. This gentleman, then a resident and merchant of Springfield, was closing up his business there, and early in January, 1841, he removed to a new home in Kentucky, carrying Lincoln with him.

But

Complete cessation of mental toil; severance from too suggestive surroundings of places and persons; with the firm, judicious management of friends in whom he put utter confidence, gave the disordered intellect of the smitten man its best opportunity for restoration to health. Month after month went by, however, before it was deemed safe to trust him back among his dangers. Spring and summer and part of the autumn passed away, and with them a whole session of the Legislature to which he had been elected. Then he returned. he was not yet altogether himself. He kept the secret of the agony which had overpowered him, but his mind still vacillated strangely concerning his matrimonial engagement. Miss Todd's friends at one time urged her to give him up. At another they seem to have given her directly opposite counsel. So did the friends of Lincoln and of both for him. The two met and met again, but there is no record that at any time there was a sign of a change of purpose in Mary Todd. It is not well to speak or think lightly of such womanly faith and constancy as this. She loved him, trusted him, and she continually drew him to her more and more nearly and irrevocably.

On his return to Springfield, Mr. Lincoln at once resumed

his law-practice and plunged again into politics. Habitually gloomy as his face had grown to be, he did not wear his heart upon his sleeve. He took his part with energy in all the affairs of the day. It was well, too, for his mental health, to be brought so continually in contact with a high-spirited and funloving girl like Mary Todd.

In the course of the following year a merry prank of hers ended in a serious scrape for him.

Miss Todd was mistress of a somewhat biting style of satire, and enjoyed the application of it highly. It even led her to the occasional contribution of political lampoons to the Springfield newspapers. As a matter of course, Mr. Lincoln was admitted to the secret of the authorship of these "Letters from the Lost Townships," and he may have aided in the preparation of one or more of them.

Among the rising politicians of Illinois, at that time, was a young Irish gentleman, James Shields, afterwards to be famous as a soldier and political leader, but whose quick temper and sensitiveness to ridicule rendered him a dangerous target for the mischievous archery of Mary Todd.

Letter after letter appeared in "The Sangamon Journal," hitting harder and harder, until Mr. Shields could endure no longer, and sent a friend to the editor demanding the author's

name.

The editor, placed in a somewhat awkward position, revealed a half-truth by giving to the messenger, General Whiteside, the name of Abraham Lincoln.

A peppery and offensive communication was at once written by Mr. Shields to Mr. Lincoln, eliciting a dignified but unsatisfactory reply, and a challenge to fight a duel speedily followed. The "code of honor," as it was the absurd fashion to describe the system of fantastic rules regulating that form of deliberate murder, was then in full force in the West. Even those who perceived its insanity and hated its brutality had not yet learned to repudiate its hellish authority.

It seemed therefore necessary for Mr. Lincoln to accept the challenge. Then it was needful that the friends of both parties should solemnly ruffle through the customary correspondence, public and private. There were the usual interviews, misunderstandings, delicate points of honor, and all the other doings and undoings which make the duelist ridiculous. At last the very place of meeting was agreed upon, three miles from Alton, Illinois, but on the Missouri shore of the Mississippi River. The weapons selected were "cavalry broadswords of the largest size," and the idea of being hacked at with such a cleaver by a man of Lincoln's size and strength could hardly have been a pleasant one for Mr. James Shields.

It was very much a matter of course that the seconds, surgeons, mutual friends, and other members of the customary mob of assistants at such an affair managed to patch the matter up in time to prevent the use of the broadswords, and afterwards the truth gradually leaked out as to the authorship of the "Letters from the Lost Townships." Mr. Lincoln did not fight the duel, and the larger share of the ridicule attached to Mr. Shields, but it remained a sore subject to the former ever afterwards.

The arrangements for not fighting had been somewhat elaborate, and had dragged on through all the latter part of September and into October. Right along with them, and, as it seemed, somewhat hand-in-hand, a more important result had been preparing.

On the 4th of November Mr. Lincoln was married to Mary Todd.

The young couple went into very respectable quarters, boarding at the Globe Tavern, where they were compelled to pay the then good price of four dollars a week. The bridegroom was finally out of debt, but he was still poor and had never cultivated the faculty of making money. He was henceforth to have a helpmeet who would see to it that his finances were kept in better order; but even Mrs. Lincoln perpetually failed

in her efforts to induce him to make a proper use of his business advantages.

Mr. Lincoln's mind had now recovered health and tone and the calm strength which it never again lost. He was as hard a student as ever, both of books and men, and his professional reputation was increasing. He was once more the life and soul of political movements and party organizations. There was no danger that his ambition would be permitted to slumber, with a wife at his elbow who fully believed in his capacity for almost any earthly achievement, and whose own political faculties were much more than ordinary.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MANHOOD.

An Honest Lawyer-A Storm-The Henry Clay Campaign-The Old Cabin -Partnerships-Coarse and Fine-Elected Congressman-The Mexican War-President Making-The Pro-Slavery Formula-Southern Friendships.

NEITHER politics nor social nor domestic interests prevented Mr. Lincoln from giving careful and laborious attention to his professional duties. On the 3d of December, 1839, he was admitted to practice in the Circuit Court of the United States. His presentation of his first case in that court stands all alone in the annals of the law. He arose and addressed the bench as follows:

“This is the first case I have ever had in this court, and I have therefore examined it with great care. As the Court will perceive by looking at the abstract of the record, the only question in this case is one of authority. I have not been able to find any authority sustaining my side of the case, but I have found several cases directly in point on the other side. I will now give these cases and then submit the case."

The courage, candor, simple honor, required for such an utterance, working out afterwards in all he said or did, before judges and juries, gave him a power with them which was peculiarly his own. Men cannot fail to be influenced by the truth-seeking argument of an advocate in whose integrity they are compelled by him to repose unquestioning confidence.

There were cases brought to him which he could not and would not touch. No possible fee would induce him to be

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