to me. The matter you
speak of on my account you may attend to as you say, unless you shall
hear of my condition forbidding it. I say this because I fear I shall
be unable to attend to any business here, and a change of scene might
help me."

In the summer he visited his friend Speed, who had sold his store in
Springfield, and returned to Louisville, Kentucky. The visit did much
to brighten his spirits, for, writing back in September, after his
return, to his friend's sister, he was even gay.

A curious situation arose the next year (1842), which did much to
restore Lincoln to a more normal view of his relation to Miss Todd.
In the summer of 1841, his friend Speed had become engaged. As his
marriage approached, he in turn was attacked by a melancholy not
unlike that which Lincoln had suffered. He feared he did not love well
enough to marry, and he confided his fear to Lincoln. Full of sympathy
for the trouble of his friend, Lincoln tried in every way to persuade
him that his "twinges of the soul" were all explained by nervous
debility. When Speed returned to Kentucky, Lincoln wrote him several
letters, in which he consoled, counselled, or laughed at him. These
letters abound in suggestive passages. From what did Speed suffer?
From three special causes and a general one, which Lincoln proceeds to
enumerate:

"The general cause is, that you are naturally of a nervous
temperament; and this I say from what I have seen of you
personally, and what you have told me concerning your mother
at various times, and concerning your brother William at the
time his wife died. The first special cause is your exposure
to bad weather on your journey, which my experience clearly
proves to be very severe on defective nerves. The second is
the absence of all business and conversation of friends,
which might divert your mind, give it occasional rest from the
intensity of thought which will sometimes wear the sweetest
idea thread-bare and turn it to the bitterness of death. The
third is the rapid and near approach of that crisis on which
all your thoughts and feelings concentrate."

Speed writes that his _fiancee_ is ill, and his letter is full of
gloomy forebodings of an early death. Lincoln hails these fears as an
omen of happiness.

[Illustration: THE GLOBE HOTEL, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.

In a letter to Joshua R. Speed, dated May 18, 1843, Lincoln wrote: "We
are not keeping house,