recollection
that we were introduced. I shall be pleased to receive a line from you.

The prospect of Republican success now appears very flattering, so far as
I can perceive. Do you see anything to the contrary?

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

TO A. JONAS.

(Confidential.) SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JULY 21, 1860.

HON. A. JONAS.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as good or even
better men than I may have been in American or Know-Nothing lodges; but in
point of fact, I never was in one at Quincy or elsewhere. I was never
in Quincy but one day and two nights while Know-Nothing lodges were in
existence, and you were with me that day and both those nights. I had
never been there before in my life, and never afterward, till the joint
debate with Douglas in 1858. It was in 1854 when I spoke in some
hall there, and after the speaking, you, with others, took me to an
oyster-saloon, passed an hour there, and you walked with me to, and parted
with me at, the Quincy House, quite late at night. I left by stage for
Naples before daylight in the morning, having come in by the same route
after dark the evening, previous to the speaking, when I found you waiting
at the Quincy House to meet me. A few days after I was there, Richardson,
as I understood, started this same story about my having been in a
Know-Nothing lodge. When I heard of the charge, as I did soon after; I
taxed my recollection for some incident which could have suggested it; and
I remembered that on parting with you the last night I went to the office
of the hotel to take my stage-passage for the morning, was told that no
stage-office for that line was kept there, and that I must see the driver
before retiring, to insure his calling for me in the morning; and a
servant was sent with me to find the driver, who, after taking me a square
or two, stopped me, and stepped perhaps a dozen steps farther, and in my
hearing called to some one, who answered him, apparently from the upper
part of a building, and promised to call with the stage for me at the
Quincy House. I returned, and went to bed, and before day the stage called
and took me. This is all.

That I never was in a Know-Nothing lodge in Quincy, I should expect could
be easily proved by respectable men who were always in the lodges and
never saw me there. An affidavit of one or two such would put the matter
at rest.

And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can gain a poi