nts, or for taking counsel of wise friends,
manly decision had not come easily to him. He had let a third person
almost engage him to Miss Owens. Once in this relation to her, he had
let it be the woman's part and not the man's to have decision enough
for the two. Speed had to tell him that he must face Miss Todd and
speak to her, and Speed again had to make clear to him what the effect
of his speaking had been. In time he decided what he thought his own
feelings were, but it was by inference from the feelings of Speed.
Lastly, it seems, the troubles of his married life were met by mere
patience and avoidance. All this, of course, concerned a side of
life's affairs in regard to which his mind had suffered painful shocks;
but it shows the direction of his possible weakness and his possible
strength in other things. It falls in with a trait which he himself
noted in one of the letters to Speed: "I have no doubt," he writes, "it
is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of
Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realise." All such
men have to go through deep waters; but they do not necessarily miss
either success or happiness in the end. Lincoln's life may be said to
have tested him by the test which Mr. Kipling states in his lines about
Washington:--

"If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim."

He was to prove that he could do this; it is for the following pages to
show in how high a degree. Meanwhile one thing should already be clear
about him. No shrewd judge of men could read his letters to Speed with
care and not feel that, whatever mistakes this man might commit,
fundamentally he was worthy of entire trust. That, as a matter of
fact, is what, to the end of his life, Speed and all the men who knew
him and an ever widening circle of men who had to judge by more casual
impressions did feel about Lincoln. Whatever was questionable in his
private or public acts, his own explanation, if he happened to give
one, would be taken by them as the full and naked truth, and, if there
was no known explanation, it remained to them an irrebuttable
presumption that his main intention was right.

CHAPTER IV

LINCOLN IN CONGRESS AND IN RETIREMENT

1. _The Mexican War and Lincoln's Work in Congress_.

Lincoln had ceased before his marriage to sit in the Illinois
Legislature. He had won sufficient standing for his am