Speed, I am moved." With John T. Stewart, his comrade in
the Black Hawk campaign, he formed a law partnership. Lincoln and
Stewart were both too much interested in politics to give their
undivided devotion to the law. During their four years together they
made a living, and had work enough to keep them busy but it was not of
the kind that proved either very interesting or lucrative.

He spent much time making public speeches on a variety of occasions and
subjects, obviously practicing the art of eloquent address for his own
improvement. In 1838 he was again elected to the legislature and was
minority candidate for Speaker.

Now Mrs. N. W. Edwards was one of the local aristocrats of Springfield,
and her sister, Mary Todd from Kentucky, came to visit her. Mary Todd
was beautiful and Lincoln and Douglas were rivals for her hand.
Observers at the time thought that with a brilliant and talented girl
the graceful and dashing Douglas would surely be preferred. But Miss
Todd made her own selection and she and Lincoln were engaged to be
married on New Year's day, 1841.

The day came and the wedding was not solemnized. Now there came upon him
again that black and awful melancholy. He wandered about in utter gloom.
To help him, his good friend Joshua Speed took him away to Kentucky for
a trip. Upon his return a reconciliation with Mary Todd led to their
marriage, November, 1842. To Lincoln's kindly manner, his
considerateness and his self-control, she was the opposite. The rule
"opposites attract" may explain the union, and if the marriage was not
ideally happy it may be conjectured that one more happy might have
interfered with that career for which Destiny was preparing him.

In 1841, Stewart went to Congress and Lincoln dissolved the partnership
to form another with Judge Stephen T. Logan who was accounted the best
lawyer in Illinois. Contact with Logan made Lincoln a more diligent
student and an abler practitioner of the law. But two such positive
personalities could not long work in harmony, so in 1843 Lincoln formed
a partnership with William H. Herndon, a man of abolitionist
inclinations who remained Lincoln's junior partner until Lincoln's death
and became his biographer. But they were very poor. The struggle was
hard, and Lincoln and his bride were of necessity very frugal. In 1841
he might have had the nomination for Governor, but he declined it;
having given up his ambition to become the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois.