that absorbed his mind.  The young man says he remembers wondering in his boyish way how so rough and plain a man should happen to live in so respectable a house.  The habit of mental absorption, or ‘absent-mindedness’ as it is called, was common with him always, but particularly during the formative periods of his life.  The New Salem people, it will be remembered, thought him crazy because he passed his best friends in the street without seeing them.  At the table, in his own family, he often sat down without knowing or realizing where he was, and ate his food mechanically.  When he ‘came to himself’ it was a trick with him to break the silence by the quotation of some verse of poetry from a favorite author.  It relieved the awkwardness of the situation, served as a ‘blind’ to the thoughts which had possessed him, and started conversation in a channel that led as far as possible from the subject that he had set aside.”

Mr. Lamon has written with great freedom of the sorrow that brooded over Lincoln’s home.  Some knowledge of the blight which this cast upon his life is necessary for a right interpretation of the gloomy moods that constantly oppressed him and left their indelible impress on his face and character.  Mr. Lamon states unreservedly that Lincoln’s marriage was an unhappy one.  The circumstances preceding his union with Miss Todd have been related.  Mr. Lamon says:  “He was conscientious and honorable and just.  There was but one way of repairing the injury he had done Miss Todd, and he adopted it.  They were married; but they understood each other, and suffered the inevitable consequences.  Such troubles seldom fail to find a tongue; and it is not strange that in this case neighbors and friends, and ultimately the whole country, came to know the state of things in that house.  Lincoln scarcely attempted to conceal it.  He talked of it with little or no reserve to his wife’s relatives, as well as to his own friends.  Yet the gentleness and patience with which he bore this affliction from day to day and from year to year was enough to move the shade of Socrates.  It touched his acquaintances deeply, and they gave it the widest publicity.”  Mrs. Colonel Chapman, daughter of Dennis Hanks and a relative of Lincoln, made him a long visit previous to her marriage.  “You ask me,” says she, “how Mr. Lincoln acted at home.  I can say, and that truly, he was all that a husband, father, and neighbor should be, kind and affectionate to his wife and child (’Bob’ being the only one they had when I was with them), and very pleasant to all around him.  Never did I hear him utter an unkind word.”