WOMAN IN LOVE Romance is not confined solely to the realms of fiction. The romances of fact, indeed, are greater and more interesting ; they have made history, and have laid the foundations of the greatness both of artists and of poets. This section of Every Woman's Ekcyclop^dia, therefore, will include, among thousands of other subjects — Love Poems and Songs The Superstitions of Love The Engaged Girl in Many Climes Love Famous Historical Stories L.ove Letters of Famous People Love Scenes from Fictioji Proposals of Yesterday and To-day Elopements in Olden DaySy etc., etc. TRUE i^OVE STORIES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE No. 6. ABRAHAM LINCOLN In this series of articles already have been ^ depicted several phases of love — the greatest and highest human passion. First was shown the blind, pathetic, almost servile devotion of the great Napoleon ; then the ardent passion of Lord Nelson and the incomparable Emma ; then the dignified and stately wooing of the Grand Monarque ; then the romance, fantastic but intensely human, of Sheridan, a man of letters. The tragedy of love, however, as yet has not been mentioned ; not yet has been shown a man who, seeking for love, found only bitterness. Such a man was Abraham Lincoln. Spurred on by disappointment, he set out alone along the road of action. Finally fame crowned his efforts ; he was hailed, and hailed rightly, as the greatest of Americans, but, as he himself alone knew*, the emblems of his power served but to mask the misery and anguish of a broken heart. Within fifty years, although burdened and weighed down with dis ad vantages, he climbed from the lowest to the highest ° tJ 1 11 Abraham Lincoln, Presid«it of success. ne lac Reel brilliant and successful career ended education, he lacked in 1865. influence, and, although in Republican America a man can rise more quickly than in any other country, nowhere are and were class distinctions more sharply marked than there. In his case, moreover, not even once would Fate allow the stern realities of life to be softened by the sweet and soothing influence of sentiment. With Lincoln's career, however, as a politician, as a statesman, and as an ad- ministrator, this article is not concerned. It is not concerned with the problems of American slavery, or the story of ihe great Civil War. These form a romance of history. It is Lincoln the man who here will be con sidered, the man who controlled the des- tinies of America dur- ing the most critical years of her national existence, the man who was born in a log hut in a forsaken backwood, and died, by an assassin's hand, the ruler of a mighty people. Never was a great man more lovVly born. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was devoid both of ambition and ability. A thriftless pioneer in a " south- ern " backwood, he could neither read the United States, whose with a dastardly assassination
