rful. At last on November 4, 1842, when Lincoln was
nearly thirty-three, he was safely married. The wedding, held,
according to the prevailing custom, in a private house, was an
important function, for it was the first Episcopalian wedding that good
society in Springfield had witnessed. Malicious fortune brought in a
ludicrous incident at the last moment, for when in the lawyerlike
verbiage of the then American Prayer-Book the bridegroom said, "With
this ring I thee endow with all my goods, chattels, lands and
tenements," old Judge Brown of the Illinois Supreme Court, who had
never heard the like, impatiently broke in, "God Almighty, Lincoln!
The statute fixes all that."

There is more than the conventional reason for apology for pressing the
subject a little further. Nothing very illuminating can be said as to
the course of Lincoln's married life, but much has already been made
public about it which, though it cannot be taken as reaching to the
heart of the matter, is not properly to be dismissed as mere gossip.
Mrs. Lincoln, it is clear, had a high temper--the fact that, poor
woman! after her husband had been murdered by her side, she developed
clear symptoms of insanity, may or may not, for all we are entitled to
know, be relevant in this regard. She was much younger than her
husband, and had gone through a cruel experience for him. Moreover,
she had proper ambitions and was accustomed to proper conventional
refinements; so her husband's exterior roughness tried her sorely, not
the less we may be sure because of her real pride in him. Wife and
tailor combined could not, with any amount of money, have dressed him
well. Once, though they kept a servant then, Lincoln thought it
friendly to open the door himself in his shirt sleeves when two most
elegant ladies came to call. On such occasions, and doubtless on other
occasions of less provocation, Mrs. Lincoln's high temper was let
loose. It seems pretty certain, too, that he met her with mere
forbearance, sad patience, and avoidance of conflict. His fellow
lawyers came to notice that he stayed away from home on circuit when
all the rest of them could go home for a day or two. Fifteen years
after his wedding he himself confessed to his trouble, not disloyally,
but in a rather moving remonstrance with some one who had felt
intolerably provoked by Mrs. Lincoln. There are slight indications
that occasions of difficulty and pain to Lincoln happened up to the end