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shirt, open in the back, with a huge standing collar, dressed himself in extreme haste, and put on the shirt with the bosom at the back, a linen coat concealing the blunder. He dazed the jury with his knowledge of "horse points" and as the day was sultry, took off his coat and summed up in his shirt-sleeves.

Lincoln, sitting behind him, took in the situation, and when his turn came, remarked to the jury:

"Gentlemen, Mr. Logan has been trying for over an hour to make you believe he knows more about a horse than these honest old farmers who are witnesses.

He

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has quoted largely from his 'horse doctor,' and now, gentlemen, I submit to you, (here he lifted Logan out of his chair, and turned him with his back to the jury and the crowd, at the same time flipping up the enormous standing collar) what dependence can you place in his horse knowledge when he has not sense enough to put on his shirt?"

The roars of laughter that greeted this exhibition, and the verdict that Lincoln got soon after, gave Logan a permanent prejudice against "bosom shirts."

Lincoln's Life as Written by Himself—The Whole Thing in a Nut Shell.

The compiler of the "Dictionary of Congress" states that while preparing the work for publication in 1858, he sent to Mr. Lincoln the usual request for a sketch of his life, and received the following reply:

Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin, County, Kentucky."

"Education Defective." "Profession a Lawyer." "Have been a Captain of Volunteers in Black Hawk War." "Postmaster at a very small office." "Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature, and was a member of the Lower House of Congress.

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A writer to the Springfield Republican gives the following exceedingly interesting account of the early loves of Abraham Lincoln:

The death of Mrs. Lincoln at the home of that sister

where she was first met and courted by her future husband, closes the family life of the great President.

She was not his first or his deepest love. That distinction belongs to Ann Rutledge, whose father was the founder of New Salem, on the Sangamon, a village which is now deserted.

Rutledge was one of the famous South Carolina families, and his daughter, four years younger than Lincoln, seems to have impressed the whole community as a lovely and refined girl, unaffected, "a blonde in complexion, with golden hair, cherry-red lips, and a bonny blue eye, says McNamara.

He

McNamara was the lover who first won her heart. went to New York to take West his parents, but was de-tained some years in New York. In the meantime Lincoln pressed his suit, and the girl's parents doubted whether McNamara would ever come back; she gave her love to Lincoln, but insisted on waiting for a formal release from McNamara before marriage. The waiting told upon her sensitive organism, her health declined, and she died of what was called brain fever on August. 25, 1835.

This was the great grief of Lincoln's youth. His reason was unsettled and his friend, Bowlin Greene, had to take him off to a lonely log cabin and keep him until he recovered his sanity. Then was when he learned the poem beginning:

"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"

An old friend who asked him after his election to the Presidency if it was true that he loved and courted Ann Rutledge, got this reply:

"It is true true; indeed I did. I have loved the name

of Rutledge to this day. It was my first. I loved the woman dearly. She was a handsome girl; would have made a good, loving wife; was natural and quite intellectual, though not highly educated. I did honestly and truly love the girl, and think often, often of her now."

McNamara returned soon after her death, lived near the little burying ground. and in 1866 pointed out the grave of Ann Rutledge to Mr. Herndon. This affair had

a marked effect upon Lincoln's life, and added to its somber tone; but it probably had also a deeper meaning in purifying and ennobling his inner nature

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Mr. Lincoln, who by this time was a member of the legislature, and about 27, next "paid attentions" to a Miss Owens, a smart young woman of some avoirdupois, who once told him that she thought he was "lacking in the smaller attentions, those little links which made up the great chain of woman's happiness," because he dangled along by her side once when they were going up a hill, and allowed her friend, Mrs. Bowlin Greene, to "carry a big, fat child, and crossly disposed," up the hill.

A still more untoward incident happened once at Mrs. Able's, a sister of Miss Owens. Lincoln had sent word. to Able's that he was coming down to see Miss Owens. She, girl fashion, to test her lover, went off to Gra

ham's," about a mile and a half. When Lincoln came and was so informed, he asked if Miss Owens did not know he was coming.

Mrs. Able said no, but one of her enfantes terribles promptly replied:

"Yes, ma, she did, for I heard Sam tell her so."

"Lincoln sat awhile and then went about his business," says Lamon's account. Letters exist from Lincoln to Miss Owens in 1836 and 1839, in one of which he says:

"If you feel yourself in any degree bound to me, I am now willing to release you, provided you wish it; while, on the other hand, I am willing and even anxious to bind you faster, if I can be convinced that it will, in any considerable degree, add to your happiness. Nothing would make me more miserable than to believe you miserable -nothing more happy than to know you were so."

This is the language of an honorable man, a cool lover, and a practiced hand in the English language. Miss Owens lived to marry another man at her home in Kentucky, and have two sons in the rebel army.

Lamon prints also a letter of Lincoln to Mrs. O. H. Browning, in 1838, reviewing this affair in terms, it must be confessed, brutally derogatory to the young woman's personal appearance and parts. Lamon speaks of its defective spelling, but there are only one or two misspelled words in it, and these, likely enough, by accident. Lincoln was evidently mortified by his rejection and ignobly attempted to represent to Mrs. Browning (the wife of his new-found legislative friend), that the object of his affections had been unworthy of them.

It was not two years (1839) before another Springfield

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