of the bills, nor was the
record he made in other directions at all remarkable. He was placed
on the committee of public accounts and expenditures, and attended
meetings with great fidelity. His first act as a member was to give
notice that he would ask leave to introduce a bill limiting the
jurisdiction of justices of the peace--a measure which he succeeded in
carrying through. He followed this by a motion to change the rules, so
that it should not be in order to offer amendments to any bill after
the third reading, which was not agreed to; though the same rule, in
effect, was adopted some years later, and is to this day in force in
both branches of the Illinois Assembly. He next made a motion to take
from the table a report which had been submitted by his committee,
which met a like fate. His first resolution, relating to a State
revenue to be derived from the sales of the public lands, was denied
a reference, and laid upon the table. Neither as a speaker nor an
organizer did he make any especial impression on the body.

THE STORY OF ANN RUTLEDGE.

In the spring of 1835 the young representative from Sangamon returned
to New Salem to take up his duties as postmaster and deputy surveyor,
and to resume his law studies. He exchanged his rather exalted
position for the humbler one with a light heart. New Salem held all
that was dearest in the world to him at that moment, and he went back
to the poor little town with a hope, which he had once supposed honor
forbade his acknowledging even to himself, glowing warmly in his
heart. He loved a young girl of that town, and now for the first time,
though he had known her since he first came to New Salem, was he free
to tell his love.

One of the most prominent families of the settlement in 1831, when
Lincoln first appeared there, was that of James Rutledge. The head of
the house was one of the founders of New Salem, and at that time the
keeper of the village tavern. He was a high-minded man, of a warm and
generous nature, and had the universal respect of the community. He
was a South Carolinian by birth, but had lived many years in Kentucky
before coming to Illinois. Rutledge came of a distinguished family:
one of his ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence; another
was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by
appointment of Washington, and another was a conspicuous leader in the
American Congress.

The third of the nine children in the Rutledge h