esent it. The access of it which was brought on by this
unhappy love affair was somewhat odd and uncouth in its manifestations,
but was so genuine and sincere that one feels that he was truly
undergoing the baptism of a great sorrow.

At no other point is there more occasion to note this trait of
character, which presents a curious and interesting subject for study.
Probably no exhaustive solution is possible. One wanders off into the
mystery of human nature, loses his way in the dimness of that which can
be felt but cannot be expressed, and becomes aware of even dimmer
regions beyond in which it is vain to grope. It is well known that the
coarse and rough side of life among the pioneers had its reaction in a
reserved and at times morose habit, nearly akin to sadness, at least in
those who frequented the wilderness; it was the expression of the
influence of the vast, desolate, and lonely nature amid which they
passed their lives. It is true that Lincoln was never a backwoodsman,
and never roved alone for long periods among the shadowy forests and the
limit-less prairies, so that their powerful and weird influences,
though not altogether remote, never bore upon him in full force; yet
their effect was everywhere around him, and through others he imbibed
it, for his disposition was sensitive and sympathetic for such purposes.
That there was also a simple prosaic physical inducement cannot be
denied. Hardship and daily discomfort in all the arrangements of life
counted for something, and especially so the bad food, greasy,
unwholesome, horribly cooked, enough to afflict an ostrich with the blue
devils of dyspepsia. The denizen of the town devoured messes vastly
worse than the simple meal of the hunter and trapper, and did not
counteract the ill effect by hard exercise in the free, inspiring air.
Such facts must be considered, though they diminish the poetry which
rhetoricians and sentimentalists have cast over the melancholy of
Lincoln's temperament. Yet they fall far short of wholly accounting for
a gloom which many have loved to attribute to the mysticism of a great
destiny, as though the awful weight of his immense task was making
itself felt in his strange, brooding nature long years before any human
prophet could have forecast any part of that which was to come. In this
apparent vague consciousness of the oppression of a great burden of
toil, duty, and responsibility, casting its shadow so far before, there
is somethin