nt. Miss Todd
was jealous and exacting. Lincoln frequently failed to accompany her
to the merry-makings which she wanted to attend. She resented this
indifference, which seemed to her a purposed slight, instead of simply
a lack of thought on his part, and sometimes she went with Mr.
Douglas or any other escort who offered. Reproaches and tears and
misunderstanding followed. If the lovers made up, it was only to
fall out again. At last Lincoln became convinced that they were
incompatible, and resolved that he must break the engagement. But the
knowledge that the girl loved him took away his courage. He felt that
he must not draw back, and he became profoundly miserable.

"Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it
is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented;
and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy
than to fail in the effort," Lincoln had written Miss Owens three
years before. How could he make this brilliant, passionate creature to
whom he was betrothed happy?

A mortal dread of the result of the marriage, a harrowing doubt of
his own feelings, possessed him. The experience is not so rare in the
lives of lovers that it should be regarded, as it often has been, as
something exceptional and abnormal in Lincoln's case. A reflective
nature founded in melancholy, like Lincoln's, rarely undertakes
even the simpler affairs of life without misgivings. He certainly
experienced dread and doubt before entering on any new relation.
When it came to forming the most delicate and intimate of all human
relations, he staggered under a storm of uncertainty and suffering,
and finally broke the engagement.

So horrible a breach of honor did this seem to him that he called the
day when it occurred the "fatal first of January, 1841," and months
afterward he wrote to his intimate friend Speed: "I must regain my
confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves when they are made.
In that ability I once prided myself as the only or chief gem of my
character; that gem I lost--how and where you know too well. I have
not yet regained it, and, until I do, I cannot trust myself in any
matter of much importance."

[Illustration: ROBERT S. TODD.

Robert S. Todd, father of Mrs. Lincoln, came of distinguished
ancestors. He was the seventh son of Major-General Levi Todd, and was
born at Lexington, Kentucky, February 25, 1791. He was prominent in
the politics of Kentucky