will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.”  It proved, at a later day, very lucky for America that the virtuous Lincoln, who did not drink strong drink—­nor, it is sad to say, smoke, nor, which is all to the good, chew—­did feel like that about drunkenness; But there was great and loud wrath.  “It’s a shame,” said one, “that he should be permitted to abuse us so in the house of the Lord.”  It is certain that in this sort of way he did himself a good deal of injury as an aspiring politician.  It is also the fact that he continued none the less persistently in a missionary work conceived in a spirit none the less Christian because it shocked many pious people.

3. Marriage.

The private life of Lincoln continued, and for many years increasingly, to be equally marked by indiscriminate sociability and brooding loneliness.  Comfort and the various influences which may be associated with the old-fashioned American word “elegance” seem never to enter into it.  What is more, little can be discerned of positive happiness in the background of his life, as the freakish elasticity of his youth disappeared and, after a certain measure of marked success, the further objects of his ambition though not dropped became unlikely of attainment and seemed, we may guess, of doubtful value.  All along he was being moulded for endurance rather than for enjoyment.

Nor, though his children evidently brought him happiness, does what we know of his domesticities and dearest affections weaken this general impression.  When he married he had gone through a saddening experience.  He started on manhood with a sound and chivalrous outlook on women in general, and a nervous terror of actual women when he met them.  In New Salem days he absented himself from meals for the whole time that some ladies were staying at his boarding house.  His clothes and his lack of upbringing must have weighed with him, besides his natural disposition.  None the less, of course he fell in love.  Miss Ann Rutledge, the daughter of a store and tavern keeper from Kentucky with whom Lincoln was boarding in 1833, has been described as of exquisite beauty; some say this is over-stated, but speak strongly of her grace and charm.  A lady who knew her gives these curiously collocated particulars:  “Miss Rutledge had auburn hair, blue eyes, fair complexion.  She was pretty, slightly slender, but in everything a good-hearted young woman.  She was about five feet two inches high, and weighed in the neighbourhood of a hundred and twenty pounds.  She was beloved by all who knew her.  She died as it were of grief.  In speaking of her death and her grave Lincoln once said to me, ’My heart lies buried there.’” The poor girl, when Lincoln first came courting to her, had passed through a grievous agitation.  She had been engaged to a young man, who suddenly returned to his home in the Eastern States, after revealing to her, with some explanation which was more