tried to conceal
from me, and I well understood. You have now been the husband of a
lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than the
day you married her I well know. . . . But I want to ask a close
question! 'Are you in _feeling_ as well as in _judgment_ glad you are
married as you are?' From anybody but me this would be an impudent
question, not to be tolerated, but I know you will pardon it in me.
Please answer it quickly, as I am impatient to know."

Speed remained in Kentucky; Lincoln was too poor for visits of
pleasure; and Speed was not a man who cared for political life; but the
memorials, from which the above quotations have been taken, of
Lincoln's lasting friendship with Speed and his kind mother, who gave
Lincoln a treasured Bible, and his kind young wife, who made her
husband's friend her own, and whose violet, dropped into her husband's
letter to him just as he was sealing it, was among the few flowers that
Lincoln ever appreciated, throw the clearest light that we can anywhere
obtain on the inner mind of Lincoln.

As may have been foreseen, Mary Todd and he had met again on a friendly
footing. A managing lady is credited with having brought about a
meeting between them, but evidently she did not do it till Lincoln was
at least getting desirous to be managed. He was much absorbed at this
time in law business, to which since his breakdown he had applied
himself more seriously. It was at this period too that his notable
address on temperance was given. Soon after his meetings with Miss
Todd began again he involved himself in a complication of a different
kind. He had written, partly, it seems, for the young lady's
amusement, some innocent if uninteresting political skits relating to
some question about taxes. This brought on him an unexpected challenge
from a fiery but diminutive revenue official, one Colonel Shields, a
prominent Democratic politician. Lincoln availed himself of the right
of the challenged to impose ridiculous conditions of combat, partly no
doubt in fun, but with the sensible object also of making sure that he
could disarm his antagonist with no risk of harm to the little man.
The tangled controversy which ensued as to how and by whose fault the
duel eventually fell through has nothing in it now, but the whole
undignified business seems to have given Lincoln lasting chagrin, and
worried him greatly at a time when it would have been well that he
should be chee