In 1839, another Kentucky belle [Footnote: Addressing Kentuckians in a
speech made at Cincinnati, in 1859, Lincoln said: "We mean to marry our
girls when we have a chance; and I have the honor to say I once did
have a chance in that way."] arrived in Illinois to follow the steps of
her sister, who had found a conquest there. This Mrs. Edwards
introduced Miss Mary Todd, and she became the belle of the Sangamon
bottom. Lincoln was pitted against another young lawyer, afterward the
eminent Stephen A. Douglas, but, odd as it appears, Miss Todd singled
out the Ugly Duckling as the more eligible of the two. Whatever the
reason--strange in a man knowing how to bide his time to win--Lincoln
wrote to the lady, withdrawing from the contest, allowed to be hopeless
by him. His friend Speed would not bear the letter, but pressed him to
have a face-to-face explanation. The rogue--who was in the toils
himself, and was shortly wedded--believed the parley would remove the,
perhaps, imaginary hindrance. But Miss Todd accepted the deliverance;
thereupon they parted--but immediately the reconciliation took place.
The nuptials were settled, but here again Lincoln displayed a
waywardness utterly out of keeping with his subsequent actions. He
"bolted" on the wedding-day--New-year's, 1841. Searching for him, his
friends--remembering the fit after the Rutledge death--found him in the
woods like the Passionate Pilgrim of ancient romance. Luckily he was
inspirited by them with a feeling that an irrepressible desire to live
till assured that the world is "a little better for my having lived in
it." Seeing what ensued, one could say then "Good _Speed_!" to his
bosom friend of that name. But this friend married in the next year,
and in his cold loneliness so doubled, Lincoln harked back to the
flame. She ought never to have forgiven him for the slight, but it was
not possible for her to repay him with poetic justice by rejoicing
Stephen A. Douglas, as that gentleman had looked elsewhere for
matrimonial recompense. Lincoln and Miss Todd, in 1842, renewed the old
plight and never again were divided.
* * * * *