it at that early stage? There was nothing at that time for reason to work upon-whether she was merely able, sensible, or even of good character, you did not nor could then know, except perhaps you might infer the least from the company you found her in. . . Say candidly, were not those heavenly black eyes the whole basis of all your reasoning on the subject? After you and I had once been at the residence, did you not go and take me all the way to Lexington and back for no other purpose but to get to see her again on your return on that evening and take a trip for that express object? What earthly consideration would you take to find her scouting and despising you and giving herself to another? But of this you need have no apprehension, and therefore you cannot bring it home to your feelings."

Herndon says Lincoln was bringing home his own feelings at the time of Mary Todd's flirtation with Douglas, and so he continued to admonish and encourage Speed. He culled proof from every instance that fell in his path. Speed's betrothed had been ill, which was a cause of still greater depression to him. Lincoln wrote:

"I hope and believe that your present anxiety about her health and her life must and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as to truth of your affection for her. If they can once and forever be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly for that object) surely nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery. . .

"It really appears to me that you yourself ought to re

joice and not sorrow at this indubitable evidence of your undying affection for her. Why, Speed, if you did not love her, although you might not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so you must pardon You know the hell I have suffered on that point and how tender I am upon it. You know I do not mean wrong. I have been quite clear of hypo since you left, even better than I was along in the Fall."

me.

In February Speed was married, and Lincoln offered him his last counsel, for after that, as he himself put it, you will be on ground that I have never occupied," and consequently might advise wrongly. His letter was still in the vein of encouragement for the plunge he himself had not dared to take:

"I do fondly hope, however, that you will never again need any comfort from abroad. . . . I incline to think it probable that your nerves will occasionally fail you for awhile; but once you get them firmly graded now, that trouble is over forever. If you went through the ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient composure not to excite alarm in any present, you are safe beyond question, and in two or three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men."

After Speed's marriage Lincoln seemed very much relieved that the ordeal was over. Then a slight anxiety came to him lest Speed might after all be unhappy. He wrote him two letters in one day. The first was an acknowledgment of his marriage, the second was a little more intimate. Marriage, he said,

was a consummation, and could not see why there should

“I feel somewhat jealous "You will be so exclu

be any unhappiness in it. of both of you now," he says. sively concerned for one another that I shall be entirely forgotten. . . . If you could but contemplate her (Speed's wife) through my imagination, it would appear ridiculous to me that anyone should for a moment be unhappy with her. My old father used to have a saying that if you made a bad bargain hug it all the tighter, and it occurs to me that if the bargain just closed can possibly be called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one for applying that maxim to which my fancy can by any effort picture."

Having seen his friend safely across the rubicon, Lincoln fell back again into his old isolation. He suffered that he should have made Mary Todd suffer. He suffered also that he did not have abandon enough to throw himself into new happiness. after Speed's marriage he writes:

Several weeks

"It cannot be told how it thrills me with joy to hear you say you are ' far happier than you ever expected to be.' That much I know is enough. I know you too well to suppose your expectations were not at least sometimes extravagant, and if the reality exceeds them all, I say, 'Enough, dear Lord.' I am not going beyond the truth when I tell you that the short space it took me to read your last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum of all I have enjoyed since that fatal first of January 1841. Since then it seems to me I should have been entirely happy but for the never-absent, idea that there is one still unhappy whom I have contributed to make so. That kills my soul. I cannot but reproach myself for even

She ac

wishing to be happy while she is otherwise. companied a large party on the railroad cars to Jacksonville last Monday, and on her return spoke, so that I heard it, of having enjoyed the trip exceedingly. God be praised for that!"

Through the medium of friends Mary Todd and Lincoln were brought together again. Somehow the past held them, and the year of misery and strain seemed to drop out at the pull of it. The human need held them too, and they were again drifting into marriage with each other, though this time a little secretively, as if mistrusting the event. In July Lincoln wrote to Speed: "I must gain confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves when they are made. In that ability I once prided myself as the only chief gem of my character; that gem I lost, how and where you know too well. I have not regained it, and until I do I cannot trust myself in any matter of much importance. I believe now that had you understood my case at the time as well as I understood yours afterwards, by the aid you would have given me I should have sailed clear through. But that does not now afford me sufficient confidence to begin that or the like of that again."

It was evident, drift as he would into marriage, that he was on the horns of the dilemma of suffering without her and yet being unsatisfied with her. In October, a month before his own marriage, he wrote the last and most significant letter to Speed:

"But I began this letter not for what I have been writing, but to say something on that subject which you know to be

of such infinite solicitude to me. The immense sufferings you endured from the first days of September till the middle of February you never tried to conceal from me, and I well understood. You have now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than the day you married her I well know, for without you could not be living. But I have your word for it, too, and the returning elasticity of spirits which is manifested in your letters. But I want to ask a close question: 'Are you in feeling as well as judgment glad you are married as you are? From anybody but me this would be an impudent question, not to be tolerated, but I know you will pardon it in me. Please answer it quickly, as I am impatient to know."

That the answer was satisfactory, that Speed felt glad as well as judged himself to be, was manifest by the fact that Lincoln himself took heart, and appeared at the little quiet ceremony of his own marriage on 4th November 1842. The licence and the minister were procured on the same day as the marriage. The aristocratic tone to the wedding was given by the bride, who saw to it that the ceremony should be Episcopal. Marriages in Springfield at this time were simple, civil affairs, usually performed by a magistrate.

One of the guests, Thomas C. Brown, an old-timer of the Supreme Court, was heard to whisper, when Lincoln placed the ring on the bride's finger, repeating, “With this ring I thee endow with all my goods and chattels, lands and tenements,"—" God Almighty, Lincoln, the statute fixes all that! This lack of reverence was perhaps better manifested by the groom himself, who, when dressing for the occasion at his friend Butler's