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One year after the sad death of Anne Rutledge, Mr. Lincoln again fell in love. Miss Mary Owens was his second sweetheart. She came from Kentucky on a visit to a married sister who lived near New Salem. In many respects she was very different from Anne Rutledge. She was older and larger; she was finely educated, and had been brought up in the most refined society, and she dressed much finer than any of the ladies who lived about New Salem. Her fashionable silk dresses, kid shoes and leghorn hat were in striking contrast with the calico dress, calfskin shoes and straw bonnet that Anne had worn.

Miss Owens was in the habit of making frequent visits to the postoffice for letters from her Kentucky home, and that was where Lincoln first became acquainted with her. It was not very long until he began to be a frequent visitor at her sister’s home, and these visits continued until her return to Kentucky. It became the gossip of the neighborhood that they were to be married. When the gossip was repeated to Lincoln by a friend he replied: "If ever that girl comes back to New Salem I am going to marry her in about three years." Miss Mary did, in due time, return, but Mr. Lincoln did not marry her, and I presume the reader will want to know the secret of it all. They did not agree, and she would not consent to the marriage. On this point Miss Marry is reported to have said that there were many things about Mr. Lincoln that she liked, and many other things she did not like, and the things she did not like overbalanced the things she did like. "I could not help admiring Mr. Lincoln," she said, "for

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his honesty, truthfulness and sincerity and goodness of heart; but I think he was a little too presumptuous when he told his friend that if I ever came back to New Salem he was going to marry me. That is a bargain that it takes two to make; and then his training and bringing up had been so different from my own and his awkward and uncouth behavior was most disagreeable. He was lacking in those little links which make up the chain of woman’s happiness. At least that was my judgment. He was not the ideal husband that I had pictured to myself that I could love, and so, when he asked me to become his wife, I told him no."

Now I will give Mr. Lincoln’s side of the story. He had a dear lady friend whom he confided in and advised with in many of his private affairs. She had learned that he was engaged to Miss Mary and that the engagement had been broken off, and she wanted to know the cause. So he wrote her a letter, and it is presumable that he did not expect the letter to go out of her possession, unless it went into the fire; but as time went on it did get out of her possession and the following is a copy of it:

"SPRINGFIELD, April 1^st, 1838.

"Dear Madam:—It was in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of my acquaintance, and who was a great friend of mine, being about to pay a visit to her father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, proposed to me that on her return she would bring a sister of hers with her on condition that I would engage to become her brother-in-law. With all convenient dispatch I, of course, accepted the proposal, for you know that I would not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it; but, privately between you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased with the project. I had seen this said sister some three years before; thought her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to plodding life through hand in hand with her. Time passed on. The lady took her journey and in due time returned, her sister in company, sure enough. This astonished me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming so readily showed that she was a trifle too willing. But on reflection it occurred to

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me that she might have been prevailed on by her married sister to come without anything concerning me ever having been mentioned to her; and so I concluded that if no other objection presented itself I would consent to waive this. All this occurred to me on hearing of her arrival in the neighborhood, for, be it remembered, I had not yet seen her except about three years previous, as above mentioned. In a few days we had an interview, and, although I had seen her before, she did not look as my imagination had pictured her. I knew she was over size, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I know she was called an old maid, and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appellation. But now, when I beheld her I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this not from her withered features, for her skin was too full of fat to permit of it contracting into wrinkles; but from her want of teeth and weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty years. In short, I was not at all pleased with her; but what could I do? I had told her sister I would take her for better or for worse; and made it a point of honor and conscience in all things to stick to my word, especially if others had been induced to act on it, which in this case I had no doubt they had. I was now fully convinced that no other man on earth would have her, and hence the conclusion that they were bent on holding me to my bargain. Well, thought I, I have said it, and be the consequences what they may be it shall not be my fault if I fail to do it. At once I determined to consider her my wife, and, this done, all my powers of discovery were put to work in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off against her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which but for her unfortunate corpulency was actually true; exclusive of this no woman that I had ever seen had a fairer face. Also tried to convince myself that the mind was much more to be valued than the person; and in this she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had been acquainted. Shortly after this, without coming to any positive understanding with her, I set out

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for Vandalia to take my seat in the legislature to which I had been elected. During my stay there I had letters from her which did not change my opinion of her intellect or intention; but, on the contrary, confirmed it in both. All this while, although I was fixed firm as the surge-repelling rock in my resolution, I found that I was continually repenting the rashness that had led me to make it. After my return home I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in any particulars. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent my time in planning how I might get along in life after my contemplated change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded, as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter. After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting subject, here I am wholly, unexpectedly and completely out of the scrape. And now I want to know if you can guess how I got out of it—out clear in every sense of the term—no violation of word, honor or conscience? I do not believe you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As the lawyer says, it was done in the manner following, to wit: After I had delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in honor do, I concluded I might as well bring it to a consummation without further delay, and so I mustered my resolution and made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking to relate, she answered No. At first I supposed she did so through an affectation of modesty, which I thought but ill-becoming her under the peculiar circumstances of her case. But on my renewal of the charge I found that she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried it again and again, but with the same success, or rather, with the same want of success. I finally was forced to give it up, at which very unexpectedly I found myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seems to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly; and, also, that she whom I had taught myself to believe of all women would have been the last to reject me with all my greatness. And, to cap the whole, I then for the first time began to suspect

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that I was really a little bit in love with her. But let it all go. I’ll try and outlive it. Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockheaded enough to have me.

"Your sincere friend,

"A. Lincoln"

The above mentioned Miss Mary Owens was afterwards married to a highly respectable gentleman and became the mother of five children. She died July 4, 1877. Speaking of Mr. Lincoln a short time before her death she said of him: "he was a man with a heart full of kindness and a head full of sense."

In the summer of 1833 the first circus and menagerie ever known in the West was billed to be in Springfield. I was then carrying the mail from Springfield to Lewistown, and Mr. Lincoln was keeping the postoffice at New Salem. The putting up of the circus bills created intense excitement in all the Springfield country. Thousands of the pioneers as well as myself, had never seen such a show. Although I lived forty miles away I was determined, if possible, to go to Springfield and see the wonderful parade (advertised to take place on the streets at 12 o’clock), and also to see the show. I started at 12 o’clock the preceding night on horseback, and got to New Salem just at sunup the next morning. I went to the Rutledge tavern to get my breakfast and have my horse fed, and was told by Mr. Rutledge that Mr. Lincoln had gone to the country the day before to do some surveying, and he had not returned; and that Bill Berry, his partner, had been to a dance the night before, and that it did not break up until near daylight, and that Bill had filled up pretty well on eggnog, and he feared I would have some trouble in waking him up to change the mail so I could go on with my journey. After breakfast I found Bill in a profound slumber in a little room adjoining the postoffice. For half an hour I pounded

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at the door, and hallooed and yelled, but all in vain. It would have taken Gabriel’s trump to have waked him up. So I had to throw my mail-bags across my horse and pursue my journey—or I would miss that wonderful parade.

At Sangamontown (seven miles beyond New Salem) I told the postmaster about my trouble at New Salem and asked him to keep the New Salem mail until my return next day, when I would carry it back. He did so, and I hurried on, and got to Springfield in time to see the parade and show. There was a mighty host of people in town who had come from far and near. Some had come as far as twenty miles in ox teams, fetching their entire families. There probably had never been so much excitement in Springfield from the time it was laid out as a town until now, except upon two other events. The first was when Lincoln the year before had piloted the little steamboat, the Talisman, up the Sangamon river and landed her at the bank near Springfield. The people believed that the Sangamon river would always be navigable for steamboats, and were wild with excitement and enthusiasm over the glorious outlook for the town’s assured prosperity. The other great excitement was when the State capital was moved from Vandalia to Springfield. I may more fully allude to these other two events in a future sketch.

There were two things connected with the show that astonished the people most wonderfully. One was the monster anaconda, a serpent eighteen feet long, and the other was the young lady that stood upon her feet on the back of a horse and rode at full speed around the ring. If there was anything that would bring fear and terror to the early settlers it was the sight of a big snake. They had seen so many cases where people had been bitten by snakes, and the terrible sufferings they had endured, that they had a good reason to abhor and dread a snake. So when the showman took the monster from the iron cage, and it crawled upon his shoulder, with its hideous head extended far above him, and with its forked tongue darting out six inches, and its baneful eyes that looked like two balls of fire, the big audience was transfixed with terror. But when the showman commenced to carry the hideous thing about the ring close to the

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people, the women commenced screaming and the children crying in chorus, and the men commenced to yell for the snake to be shut up in the cage. And so the showman had to stop the horrid performance and put the anaconda back into the iron cage, or there would have been a general stampede from the big tent. But the people cautiously thereafter approached the cage to gaze upon the dreadful snake.

The people were entranced with the spangled young woman that rode at full speed about the ring, standing upon the horse’s back. It was a common sight to see women and girls driving horses while they held the plow, or see them on horseback on a grist of corn going many miles to the water mills. The pioneer girls and women, as a rule, were expert horse-women on a side-saddle, or even bare-back. But when it came to a pretty girl standing on a horse going at full speed, it took their breath and made their hearts stand still. No mortal of them could ever have believed that a girl could do a thing like that until they saw it. There had been no rain in the Springfield country for several weeks, and the black dust lay deep in all the roads and streets. The big crowds kept it stirred up, and the women and children in their holiday clothes were a sight to behold.

I learned that Lincoln had got back to New Salem a few hours after I passed through, and was a little displeased because I had not left the mail, not knowing the cause. With every man, woman and child that could pay his way in, Mr. Lincoln went to the show. After the show was over I met Lincoln on the street, and as we met I noticed a little scowl on his face. He said to me: "how did it happen that you came through New Salem and did not have the mail changed? You might get me into trouble about this. Suppose the postmaster at Springfield should report the fact to the department at Washington that the mail was not opened at New Salem, but was brought on to Springfield, what would happen to me?"

The I told him the whole story, how I had got up at 12 o’clock at night so that I could get to Springfield to see the show come into town, and that I had never seen a show, and how anxious I was to see it, and how hard I had tried to get Bill Berry up to

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open the mail, and that I had not brought the mail to Springfield but had left it at Sangamontown and would carry it back to New Salem in the morning. The Mr. Lincoln in a kind voice said: "O, well, in that case it is all right. Bill Berry ought to have got up and opened the mail for you." Then he said: "I am going home this evening, and I will stop and get the mail and carry it home with me," which I found next day that he had done.

When I met Lincoln I noticed that he had bought a new suit of clothes and a new hat, and while he stood talking with me I had a good opportunity to scrutinize his whole wardrobe, and I believe I can remember every article of his clothing as well as if I had only seen it yesterday. The coat and pants were of brown linen and the vest of white Marseilles with dots of flowers in it. The shirt was open front with small pleats buttoned up with small ivory buttons. The collar was wide and folded over the collar of his coat. He had for a necktie a black silk handkerchief with a narrow fringe to it, and it was tied in a double bow knot. He wore a pair of low shoes with a narrow ribbon fastened on each side of the shoes, and they were tied in a double bow knot over the instep. He wore a buckeye hat, made of splints from the buckeye tree, and much after the fashion of straw hats. These buckeye hats were much worn in those times, and cost twice as much as the straw hats, or $1.25 to $1.50 each. So the reader may see how Mr. Lincoln must have looked when he was dressed up for the circus.

When I got back to New Salem next morning I found that Lincoln had given the people their mail, and that Bill Berry had got sober and was very sorry for his misconduct, and that Lincoln had washed off the Springfield black dust and was amiable and happy as ever.

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