In spite of his hard study and his lack of any bodily toil to maintain the hardness of his muscles, his strength seemed to increase rather than diminish. Harnessed by shoulder-straps to a box of stones weighing half a ton, he lifted it repeatedly and with ease. This and other feats of a similar nature enabled him to maintain his place as a keeper of the peace and a recognized disturber of all ruffianism. No fight could be fought out in the old-time way if Lincoln were at hand to interfere with it. It was so easy for him to take an angry man in each hand and hold two foolish fellows wide apart, until they should agree with him to let the matter drop and make the quarrel up. As a rule, moreover, at least one of the two men was likely to think more highly than ever of the rough peacemaker.

CHAPTER XIV.

FIRST LOVE.

A true Romance-Elected to the State Legislature-A new Suit-Free thinking.

THE honest and upright ambition of Abraham Lincoln to make a man of himself had needed no spurring. There were within him springs of life and thought as yet unopened and of whose existence he was hitherto ignorant. These were now to be discovered to him, and a new and strong incentive to exertion was to add its power to the other forces which were urging him upward.

The third child of Mr. James Rutledge, Lincoln's devoted friend and admirer, was a girl of high principle and uncommon beauty. In all the country around there was no maiden to be compared with fair Ann Rutledge. Her mental accomplishments were only such as could then be obtained in Illinois by the daughter of a country merchant of intelligence and property, but they were sufficient. She could not fail to have admirers; and when, in the second year of Lincoln's New Salem life, he came to board for a while with her father, she was already promised in marriage to his friend McNeil, a young and thriving trader and farmer of New Salem. There came to her soon afterwards a strange, romantic history. Her betrothed revealed to her the fact that his name was not McNeil but McNamar, and that he had so concealed his identity in coming West that he might build a fortune unknown to his family and then return to care for his father in his old age. He was now closing up his business, turning his property into money,

and would go to New York, perform his purpose there, and come back to wed the girl who had given him her heart.

She heard and she believed him, and he went but he did not come again. He wrote to her of his father's sickness and death. Then other letters came, at longer and longer intervals, always promising to return and holding her to her until at last their coming ceased entirely.

engagement,

It was a cruel, a terrible thing to fall upon a girl of nineteen, for she had loved him well until she had found him false. The one bitterer drop was added to her cup of trouble when she found that, during all that time, she had been winning the heart of a man whose faith could not be broken and whose integrity and manly worth all other men acknowledged.

More and more frequent grew the visits of the young lawstudent as the prospect of McNamar's return diminished, but with little encouragement from Ann until the summer of 1834. Her father's farm was but a small distance from that of Lincoln's friend Short, and Abe found many occasions for spending whole days together at the house of the man who so timely aided him.

Ann was as true as she was beautiful, and she at last was compelled to tell her urgent suitor frankly what bond it was that bade her not to love him. She refused, in her sensitive good faith, to see that she could be set free from her promise to McNamar without a formal spoken or written release. She could no longer love a man who had broken his word, had slighted her, had treated her with a neglect so heartless, but she was slow to admit her right to take another in his place. And yet she had already taken him, and Lincoln knew it, and he gave to her all the unmeasured strength of his first, wholehearted love.

It was a loyal and manly thing to do. No other thing of which he had yet shown himself capable told half so much for the growth of his inner life or promised half so well, He had something to live for now. He had a hope more

bright and beautiful than any dream he had dreamed, whether among the forests of Indiana, the rivers and bayous of the South, or the wealth-promising prairies where he had chosen his home. He worked as he had never worked before, toiling at his law-books as he rode or walked about the country. On one hot march, from Springfield home, with a volume of Blackstone's Commentaries he had borrowed, he mastered forty pages of it before he reached New Salem. With him to "master" a book was to seal its contents, as to their spirit and meaning, and largely as to their letter, in his memory forever, ready for all subsequent uses.

There was no need for any urgent friend to prompt his political ambition now. He was thirsting for such honors as would mark him as a man fitted to court and win Ann Rutledge. He well knew she would be pleased to see him win them for her, even while she reluctantly adhered to her romantic scruple concerning her broken bond.

Since the previous campaign the political world had undergone apparent changes, and the Whig party was taking form. Its principles were nearly those which Lincoln had already avowed, and he readily floated into it. Still, all party lines were as yet so loosely drawn that his Democratic personal friends were under no necessity of refusing him their votes, whatever they might do with other names upon their tickets. He announced himself as a candidate for election to the State Legislature, issued a printed address to the people of the county, and made a thorough stumping tour from neighborhood to neighborhood. He spoke as he had never before spoken, and was triumphantly elected although there were other strong candidates in the field.

In the summer of the year 1831 he had landed in Sangamon County, a penniless, friendless boy of twenty-two. Only three years later there were 1376 men in the same county ready to say by their votes that he was a suitable person to represent them at the State capital.

He had been growing fast in other ways than in the goodwill of his fellow-citizens; but he had not outgrown his honesty nor his debts. These had joined hands to keep him poor in purse, and a proper sense of personal dignity forbade him to go to the Capitol at Vandalia in the shabby clothing which was good enough for his daily round of life and work in New Salem. Money would also be required for other immediate expenses, and there was nothing in his hands that he could honestly sell to obtain it. He was already deeply in debt to his best friends, and his salary as a legislator could not be collected in advance. He had resources, however, and they did not fail him.

Among his older acquaintances was a man named Smoot, as dry a joker as himself, but better supplied with ready money. To him Lincoln went one day, in company with another friend, Hugh Armstrong.

"Smoot, did you vote for me?"

"I did that very thing."

"Well, that makes you responsible. You must lend me the money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent appearance in the Legislature."

"How much do you want?"

"About two hundred dollars, I reckon."

The honor of Sangamon County, and of New Salem in particular, was at stake, and the new representative received his two hundred dollars on the spot.

It is not difficult to guess whose eyes were among the first to discover how great a difference good clothing could make in the outer man of Ann Rutledge's tall lover. The new garments and the body under them were but a shell, however, inclosing the man to whom she was really surrendering her heart.

There were long weeks yet before Lincoln's new public duties were to begin, and not an hour of one of them could he afford to waste. He read as desperately as ever, and he was