larm; the guests assembled, wondering,
while the hour appointed passes by and the ceremony does not begin; the
failure of the prospective bridegroom to appear; the scattering of the
company, amazed, their tongues wagging. The explanation offered is an
attack of insanity. Herndon, 215; I,anon, 239-242. As might be expected
Lincoln's secretaries who see him always in a halo give no hint of such
an event. It has become a controversial scandal. Is it a fact or a myth?
Miss Tarbell made herself the champion of the mythical explanation and
collected a great deal of evidence that makes it hard to accept the
story as a fact Tarbell, I, Chap. XI. Still later a very sane memoirist,
Henry B. Rankin, who knew Lincoln, and is not at all an apologist, takes
the same view. His most effective argument is that such an event could
not have occurred in the little country town of Springfield without
becoming at the time the common property of all the gossips. The
evidence is bewildering. I find myself unable to accept the disappointed
wedding guests as established facts, even though the latest student of
Herndon has no doubts. Lincoln and Herndon, 321-322. But whether the
broken marriage story is true or false there is no doubt that Lincoln
passed through a desolating inward experience about "the fatal first
of January"; that it was related to the breaking of his engagement; and
that for a time his sufferings were intense. The letters to Speed are
the sufficient evidence. Lincoln, I, 175; 182-189; 210-219; 240; 261;
267-269. The prompt explanation of insanity may be cast aside, one
of those foolish delusions of shallow people to whom all abnormal
conditions are of the same nature as all others. Lincoln wrote to a
noted Western physician, Doctor Drake of Cincinnati, with regard to his
"case"--that is, his nervous breakdown--and Doctor Drake replied but
refused to prescribe without an interview. Lamon, 244.

V. PROSPERITY.

1. Carpenter, 304-305.

2. Lamon, 243, 252-269; Herndon, 226-243, 248-251; N. and H., 201,
203-12.

3. A great many recollections of Lincoln attempt to describe him. Except
in a large and general way most of them show that lack of definite
visualization which characterizes the memories of the careless observer.
His height, his bony figure, his awkwardness, the rudely chiseled
features, the mystery in his eyes, the kindliness of his expression,
these are the elements of the popular portrait. Now and then a closer
obse