LOVE 788 nor write, and his sole concern m life was to provide himself and his family with the requirements of a day. His mother, however, was of a different calibre. " All I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to her," Abraham declared on one of the few occa- sions in his later life when he made reference to his origin. Although her antecedents were doubtful, Mrs. Thomas Lincoln Was one of those remarkable women whom Nature educates, and who are possessed of an innate refine- ment. She understood her son, she saw in him the potentialities of future greatness, and her death Was the first and greatest sorrow in his hfe. She died in 1816, while Abraham Was still a child, and the vision of the mother whom he loved being buried on a remote farm in far Kentucky, without cere- mony, remained with him always. Amid the environment of his youth Abraham walked as a stranger ; to manual labour he showed neither inclination nor adaptability ; he was a dreamer, a thinker, and his craving for learning was insatiate. Herndon has left a dehghtful picture of the boy moving about his father's cabin with a piece of chalk, writing and ciphering on boards and on the flat side of hewn logs." And then, declares the biographer, when every available space " had been filled with his letters he would erase them, and begin anew." Although his surroundings may have been uncongenial, he may have been misunder- stood, he may have been cramped intellectu- ally, yet it was during the days of his youth that Lincoln learned to know the people whom later he Was called upon to govern. It was during his early training that he learned the invaluable lessons of tolerance and sympathy. It was the healthy pioneer life that enabled him to develop into a fine but uncouth figure of manhood, the most American of all Americans. Nobody, however, was more fully conscious of his own deficiencies than Was Abraham Lincoln ; the question of his personal ap- pearance and clothes was a constant torment to him, and in the society of Women he Was always painfully bashful. " On one occa- sion, ' records his friend Ellis, " while we were boarded at the tavern, there came an old lady, her son, and three stylish daughters from the State of Virginia, who stopped for two or three weeks, and during their stay I do not remember Mr. Lincoln ever appearing at the same table with them." This was during his residence at New Salem. He moved thither in 1831, when he decided to leave his father's hut, and to go out into the world to seek his fortune. His initial efforts as a shopkeeper, however, were not successful. This, no doubt, was due partly to the fact that Lincoln was now, as always he remained, a wretched financier, partly to his dislike for women, but mainly to the fact that his whole nature was summoning his activities to the wider field of politics, A strange, mysterious figure, clad in flax and tow pantaloons, about five inches too short in the leg, no vest or coat, a calico shirt, blue yarn socks, and " a straw hat, old style. Without a band," he devoted every one of his spare moments to stump oratory. New Salem, moreover, was the scene of Lincoln's first romance. Here, naturally, he Was thrown often into the society oi the local innkeeper, a man named Rutledge. Now, Rutledge had a daughter, a girl with fair complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair. " She Was pretty, slightly slender about five feet two inches high, and weighed in the neighbourhood of one hundred and twenty pounds. She Was beloved by all who knew her." Such is the catalogue description which has been given by an American biographer of the woman who first kindled in Lincoln's heart the flame of love. For a while, how- ever, he kept his love as a secret known only to himself. He had a rival in the field, a man named McNamar, and it was not until this man had disappeared mysteriously from New Salem that Lincoln dared to speak. And then the result was tragedy. Anne Rutledge, wavering between her loyalty to her old love and her longing for the new, fell ill. Day by day she grew weaker, and, at length, as she lay dying, she summoned Lincoln to her bedside. The subject of the interview has never been disclosed, but it can be imagined, for the girl's death moved Lincoln strangely. " My heart is buried there," he declared as he stood beside her grave. And even many years afterwards he said that the mere thought that " the rains and snows fall upon her grave" filled him with indescribable grief. For some time after the death of Anne Rutledge, Lincoln's friends feared greatly that the man either would commit suicide or would lose his reason. For days he wandered about alone, morbid and depressed. Finally, however, his con- dition became so alarming that his friends consulted together and sent him to the house of a man named Bowling Greene, who lived in a secluded spot some distance from the town. Here he was carefully nursed back to a normal state. Almost immediately, however, Lincoln found himself plunged into the midst of another matrimonial complication. On this occasion the lady's name was Mary Owens. Like Lincoln himself, she was a native of Kentucky, but it was at New Salem, at the house of her sister, Mrs. Able, that first he met her. This was long before the Anne Rutledge affair had reached its tragic climax. Shortly after he had recovered from the eflects of this disaster, however, Lincoln met Mrs. Able as she was about to set out on a journey. On hearing that she was going to Kentucky, he made inquiry for Miss Owens. Mrs. Able thereupon remarked that, if Lincoln were willing to make the girl his wife, she would bring her sister back with her to New Salem.
