bidness lay like a shadow across her happiness, and wore upon her until she fell ill. Gradually her condition became hopeless; and Lincoln, who had been shut from her, was sent for. The lovers passed an hour alone in an anguished parting, and soon after, on August 25, 1835, Ann died.

The death of Ann Rutledge plunged Lincoln into the deepest gloom. That abiding melancholy, that painful sense of the incompleteness of life which had been his mother's dowry asserted itself. It filled and darkened his mind and his imagination tortured him with its black pictures. One stormy night Lincoln was sitting beside William Greene, his head bowed on his hand, while tears trickled through his fingers; his friend begged him to control his sorrow, to try to forget. "I cannot," moaned Lincoln; "the thought of the snow and rain on her grave fills me with indescribable grief."

He was seen walking alone by the river and through the woods, muttering strange things to himself. He seemed to his friends to be in the shadow of madness. They kept a close watch over him; and at last Bowling Green, one of the most devoted friends Lincoln then had, took him home to his little log cabin, half a mile north of New Salem, under the brow of a big bluff. Here, under the loving care of Green, and his good wife Nancy, Lincoln remained until he was once more master of himself.

But though he had regained self-control, his grief was deep and bitter. Ann Rutledge was buried in Concord cemetery, a country burying-ground seven miles northwest of New Salem. To this lonely spot Lincoln frequently journeyed to weep over her grave. "My heart is buried there,' he said to one of his friends.

When McNamar returned (for McNamar's story was true, and two months after Ann Rutledge died he drove into New Salem with his widowed mother and his brothers and

sisters in the "prairie schooner" beside him) and learned of Ann's death, he "saw Lincoln at the post-office," as he afterward said, and "he seemed desolate and sorely distressed." On himself apparently, her death produced no deep impression. Within a year he married another woman; and his conduct toward Ann Rutledge is to this day a mystery.

In later life, when Lincoln's sorrow had become a memory, he told a friend who questioned him: "I really and truly loved the girl and think often of her now." There was a pause, and then the President added:

"And I have loved the name of Rutledge to this day."

When the death of Ann Rutledge came upon Lincoln, for a time threatening to destroy his ambition and blast his life, he was in a most encouraging position. Master of a profession in which he had an abundance of work and earned fair fees, hopeful of being admitted in a few months to the bar, a member of the State Assembly with every reason to believe that, if he desired it, his constituency would return him—few men are as far advanced at twenty-six as was Abraham Lincoln.

Intellectually he was far better equipped than he believed himself to be, better than he has ordinarily been credited with being. True, he had had no conventional college training, but he had by his own efforts attained the chief result of all preparatory study, the ability to take hold of a subject and assimilate it. The fact that in six weeks he had acquired enough of the science of surveying to enable him to serve as deputy surveyor shows how well-trained his mind was. The power to grasp a large subject quickly and fully is never an accident. The nights Lincoln spent in Gentryville lying on the floor in front of the fire figuring on the fire-shovel, the hours he passed in poring over the Statutes of Indiana, the days he wrestled with Kirkham's Grammar, alone made the mastery of Flint and Gibson possible. His struggle with

Flint and Gibson made easier the volumes he borrowed from Major Stuart's law library.

Lincoln had a mental trait which explains his rapid growth in mastering subjects—seeing clearly was essential to him. He was unable to put a question aside until he understood it. It pursued him, irritated him until solved. Even in his Gentryville days his comrades noted that he was constantly searching for reasons and that he “explained so clearly." This characteristic became stronger with years. He was unwilling to pronounce himself on any subject until he understood it, and he could not let it alone until he had reached a conclusion which satisfied him.

This seeing clearly became a splendid force in Lincoln; for when he once had reached a conclusion he had the honesty of soul to suit his actions to it. No consideration could induce him to abandon the line of conduct which his reason. told him was logical. Joined to these strong mental and moral qualities was that power of immediate action which so often explains why one man succeeds in life while another of equal intelligence and uprightness fails. As soon as Lincoln saw a thing to do he did it. He wants to know; here is a book-it may be a biography, a volume of dry statutes, a collection of verse; no matter, he reads and ponders it until he has absorbed all it has for him. He is eager to see the world; a man offers him a position as a "hand" on a Mississippi flatboat; he takes it without a moment's hesitation over the toil and exposure it demands. John Calhoun is willing to make him a deputy surveyor; he knows nothing of the science; in six weeks he has learned enough to begin his labors. Sangamon county must have representatives, why not he? and his circular goes out. Ambition alone will not explain this power of instantaneous action. It comes largely from that active imagination which, when a new relation or position opens, seizes on all its possibilities and from them

creates a situation so real that one enters with confidence upon what seems to the unimaginative the rashest undertaking. Lincoln saw the possibilities in things and immediately appreciated them.

But the position he filled in Sangamon county in 1835 was not all due to these qualities; much was due to his personal, charm. By all accounts he was big, awkward, ill-clad, shyyet his sterling honor, his unselfish nature, his heart of the true gentleman, inspired respect and confidence. Men might laugh at his first appearance, but they were not long in recog nizing the real superiority of his nature.

Such was Abraham Lincoln at twenty-six, when the tragic death of Ann Rutledge made all that he had attained, all that he had planned, seem fruitless and empty. He was too sincere and just, too brave a man, to allow a great sorrow permanently to interfere with his activities. He rallied his forces, and returned to his law, his surveying, his politics. He brought to his work a new power, that insight and patience which only a great sorrow can give.

CHAPTER IX

LINCOLN IS RE-ELECTED TO THE ILLINOIS ASSEMBLY-HIS FIRST PUBLISHED ADDRESS-PROTESTS AGAINST PROSLAVERY RESOLUTIONS OF THE ASSEMBLY

THE Ninth General Assembly of Illinois held its opening session in the winter of 1834-35. It was Lincoln's first experience as a legislator and it was rather a tame one, but in December, 1835, the members were called to an extra session which proved to be in every way more exciting and more eventful than its predecessors. The chief reason for its being called was in itself calculated to exhilarate the hopeful young law-givers. A census had been taken since their last session and so large an increase in population had been reported that it was considered necessary to summon the assembly to re-apportion the legislative districts. When the reapportionment was made it was found that the General Assembly was increased by fifty members, the number of senators being raised from twenty-six to forty, of representatives from fifty-five to ninety-one. A growth of fifty members in four years excited the imagination of the State. The dignity and importance of Illinois suddenly assumed new importance. It was imagined that the story of New York's growth in wealth and influence was to be repeated in this new country and every ambitious man in the assembly determined to lead in the rise of the State.

The work on internal improvements begun in the previous session took a new form. The governor, in calling the members together, had said: "While I would urge the most liberal support of all such measures as tending with perfect certainty to increase the wealth and prosperity of the