SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, July 4, 1842.
DEAR SPEED:—Yours of the 16th June was received only a day or two
since. It was not mailed at Louisville till the 25th. You speak of the
great time that has elapsed since I wrote you. Let me explain that. Your
letter reached here a day or two after I started on the circuit. I
was gone five or six weeks, so that I got the letters only a few weeks
before Butler started to your country. I thought it scarcely worth while
to write you the news which he could and would tell you more in detail.
On his return he told me you would write me soon, and so I waited for
your letter. As to my having been displeased with your advice, surely
you know better than that. I know you do, and therefore will not labor
to convince you. True, that subject is painful to me; but it is not your
silence, or the silence of all the world, that can make me forget it. I
acknowledge the correctness of your advice too; but before I resolve
to do the one thing or the other, I must gain my confidence in my own
ability to keep my resolves when they are made. In that ability you know
I once prided myself as the only or chief gem of my character; that gem
I lost—how and where you know too well. I have not yet regained it; and
until I do, I cannot trust myself in any matter of much importance. I
believe now that had you understood my case at the time as well as I
understand yours afterward, by the aid you would have given me I should
have sailed through clear, but that does not now afford me sufficient
confidence to begin that or the like of that again.
You make a kind acknowledgment of your obligations to me for your
present happiness. I am pleased with that acknowledgment. But a thousand
times more am I pleased to know that you enjoy a degree of happiness
worthy of an acknowledgment. The truth is, I am not sure that there was
any merit with me in the part I took in your difficulty; I was drawn to
it by a fate. If I would I could not have done less than I did. I always
was superstitious; I believe God made me one of the instruments of
bringing your Fanny and you together, which union I have no doubt He had
fore-ordained. Whatever He designs He will do for me yet. “Stand still,
and see the salvation of the Lord” is my text just now. If, as you say,
you have told Fanny all, I should have no objection to her seeing this
letter, but for its reference to our friend here: let her seeing it
depend upon whether she has ever known anything of my affairs; and if
she has not, do not let her.
I do not think I can come to Kentucky this season. I am so poor and make
so little headway in the world, that I drop back in a month of idleness
as much as I gain in a year’s sowing. I should like to visit you again.
I should like to see that “sis” of yours that was absent when I was
there, though I suppose she would run away again if she were to hear I
was coming.
My respects and esteem to all your friends there, and, by your
permission, my love to your Fanny.
Ever yours,