tury, sober history is content with a grandfather and great
grandfather who were military men of some repute, two great uncles who
were governors, and another who was a cabinet minister. Rather imposing
contrasted with the family tree of the child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy
Hanks! Even more significant was the lady's education. She had been to a
school where young ladies of similar social pretensions were allowed to
speak only the French language. She was keenly aware of the role marked
out for her by destiny, and quite convinced that she would always in
every way live up to it.

The course of her affair with Lincoln did not run smooth. There were
wide differences of temperament; quarrels of some sort--just what,
gossip to this day has busied itself trying to discover--and on January
1, 1841, the engagement was broken. Before the end of the month he
wrote to his law partner apologizing for his inability to be coherent
on business matters. "For not giving you a general summary of news,
you must pardon me; it is not in my power to do so. I am now the most
miserable man living. If what I feel were distributed to the whole human
family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall
ever be better, I can not tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To
remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me
. . . a change of scene might help me."

His friend Speed became his salvation. Speed closed out his business and
carried Lincoln off to visit his own relations in Kentucky. It was the
devotion of Bowlin Green and his wife over again. But the psychology
of the event was much more singular. Lincoln, in the inner life, had
progressed a long way since the death of Ann, and the progress was
mainly in the way of introspection, of self-analysis. He had begun to
brood. As always, the change did not reveal itself until an event in the
outward life called it forth like a rising ghost from the abyss of his
silences. His friends had no suspicion that in his real self, beneath
the thick disguise of his external sunniness, he was forever brooding,
questioning, analyzing, searching after the hearts of things both within
and without..

"In the winter of 1840 and 1841," writes Speed, "he was unhappy about
the engagement to his wife--not being entirely satisfied that his heart
was going with his hand. How much he suffered then on that account,
none knew so well as myself; he disclosed his whole heart to me.