“If a man is honest in his mind,” said Lincoln one day, long before he
became President, “you are pretty safe in trusting him.”
“WUZ GOIN’ TER BE ‘HITCHED.”’
“Abe’s” nephew--or one of them--related a story in connection with
Lincoln’s first love (Anne Rutledge), and his subsequent marriage to
Miss Mary Todd. This nephew was a plain, every-day farmer, and
thought everything of his uncle, whose greatness he quite thoroughly
appreciated, although he did not pose to any extreme as the relative of
a President of the United States.
Said he one day, in telling his story:
“Us child’en, w’en we heerd Uncle ‘Abe’ wuz a-goin’ to be married, axed
Gran’ma ef Uncle ‘Abe’ never hed hed a gal afore, an’ she says, sez she,
‘Well, “Abe” wuz never a han’ nohow to run ‘round visitin’ much, or go
with the gals, neither, but he did fall in love with a Anne Rutledge,
who lived out near Springfield, an’ after she died he’d come home an’
ev’ry time he’d talk ‘bout her, he cried dreadful. He never could talk
of her nohow ‘thout he’d jes’ cry an’ cry, like a young feller.’
“Onct he tol’ Gran’ma they wuz goin’ ter be hitched, they havin’
promised each other, an’ thet is all we ever heered ‘bout it. But, so
it wuz, that arter Uncle ‘Abe’ hed got over his mournin’, he wuz married
ter a woman w’ich hed lived down in Kentuck.
“Uncle ‘Abe’ hisself tol’ us he wuz married the nex’ time he come up ter
our place, an’ w’en we ast him why he didn’t bring his wife up to see
us, he said: ‘She’s very busy and can’t come.’
“But we knowed better’n that. He wuz too proud to bring her up, ’cause
nothin’ would suit her, nohow. She wuzn’t raised the way we wuz, an’ wuz
different from us, and we heerd, tu, she wuz as proud as cud be.
“No, an’ he never brought none uv the child’en, neither.
“But then, Uncle ‘Abe,’ he wuzn’t to blame. We never thought he wuz
stuck up.”