ble that he married
as early as the circumstances of his life permitted, for he had always
loved the society of women, and possessed a nature that took profound
delight in intimate female companionship.

A letter written on the eighteenth of May following his marriage, to J. F.
Speed, Esq., of Louisville, Kentucky, an early and a life-long personal
friend, gives a pleasant glimpse of his domestic arrangements at this
time. "We are not keeping house," Mr. Lincoln says in this letter, "but
boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept by a widow lady of
the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr. Wallace occupied there, and
boarding only costs four dollars a week. * * * I most heartily wish you
and your Fanny will not fail to come. Just let us know the time, a week in
advance, and we will have a room prepared for you, and we'll all be merry
together for awhile."

He seems to have been in excellent spirits, and to have been very hearty
in the enjoyment of his new relation. The private letters of Mr. Lincoln
were charmingly natural and sincere. His personal friendships were the
sweetest sources of his happiness.

To a particular friend, he wrote February 25, 1842: "Yours of the 16th,
announcing that Miss ---- and you 'are no longer twain, but one flesh,'
reached me this morning. I have no way of telling you how much happiness I
wish you both, though I believe you both can conceive it. I feel somewhat
jealous of both of you now, for you will be so exclusively concerned for
one another that I shall be forgotten entirely. My acquaintance with Miss
---- (I call her thus lest you should think I am speaking of your mother),
was too short for me to reasonably hope to long be remembered by her; and
still I am sure I shall not forget her soon. Try if you cannot remind her
of that debt she owes me, and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her
paying it.

[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RESIDENCE AT SPRINGFIELD, ILL.]

"I regret to learn that you have resolved not to return to Illinois. I
shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably things seem to be
arranged in this world! If we have no friends we have no pleasure; and if
we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.

"I did hope she and you would make your home here, yet I own I have no
right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times more sacred
than any you can owe to others, and in that light let them be respected