SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, February 3, 1842.
DEAR SPEED:—Your letter of the 25th January came to hand to-day. You
well know that I do not feel my own sorrows much more keenly than I do
yours, when I know of them; and yet I assure you I was not much hurt by
what you wrote me of your excessively bad feeling at the time you wrote.
Not that I am less capable of sympathizing with you now than ever, not
that I am less your friend than ever, but because I hope and believe
that your present anxiety and distress about her health and her life
must and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you
sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her. If they can
once and forever be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the
Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly for that object),
surely nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasurable
measure of misery. The death-scenes of those we love are surely painful
enough; but these we are prepared for and expect to see: they happen to
all, and all know they must happen. Painful as they are, they are not
an unlooked for sorrow. Should she, as you fear, be destined to an early
grave, it is indeed a great consolation to know that she is so well
prepared to meet it. Her religion, which you once disliked so much,
I will venture you now prize most highly. But I hope your melancholy
bodings as to her early death are not well founded. I even hope that
ere this reaches you she will have returned with improved and still
improving health, and that you will have met her, and forgotten the
sorrows of the past in the enjoyments of the present. I would say more
if I could, but it seems that I have said enough. It really appears
to me that you yourself ought to rejoice, and not sorrow, at this
indubitable evidence of your undying affection for her. Why, Speed, if
you did not love her although you might not wish her death, you would
most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer
a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude
intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know the
hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it. You
know I do not mean wrong. I have been quite clear of “hypo” since you
left, even better than I was along in the fall. I have seen ______ but
once. She seemed very cheerful, and so I said nothing to her about what
we spoke of.
Old Uncle Billy Herndon is dead, and it is said this evening that Uncle
Ben Ferguson will not live. This, I believe, is all the news, and enough
at that unless it were better. Write me immediately on the receipt of
this.
Your friend, as ever, LINCOLN.