you are safe beyond question, and in two or three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men.”  Soon he is reassured and can “feel somewhat jealous of both of you now.  You will be so exclusively concerned with one another that I shall be forgotten entirely.  I shall feel very lonesome without you.”  And a little later:  “It cannot be told how it thrills me with joy to hear you say you are far happier than you ever expected to be.  I know you too well to suppose your expectations were not at least sometimes extravagant, and if the reality exceeds them all, I say, ’Enough, dear Lord.’” And here follows what might perhaps have been foreseen:  “Your last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum of all that I have received since the fatal 1st of January, 1841.  Since then it seems to me I should have been entirely happy but for the never absent idea that there is still one unhappy whom I have contributed to make so.  That kills my soul.  I cannot but reproach myself for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise.”  Very significantly he has inquired of friends how that one enjoyed a trip on the new railway cars to Jacksonville, and—­not being like Falkland in “The Rivals”—­praises God that she has enjoyed it exceedingly.

This was in the spring of 1842.  Some three months later he writes again to Speed:  “I must gain confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves when they are made.  In that ability I once prided myself as the only chief gem of my character.  That gem I lost how and where you know too well.  I have not regained it, and until I do I cannot trust myself in any matter of much importance.  I believe now that, had you understood my case at the time as well as I understood yours afterwards, by the aid you would have given me I should have sailed through clear. . . .  I always was superstitious.  I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing Fanny and you together, which union I have no doubt He had fore-ordained.  Whatever He designs for me He will do.  ‘Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord,’ is my text just now.  If, as you say, you have told Fanny all, I should have no objection to her seeing this letter.  I do not think I can come to Kentucky this season.  I am so poor and make so little headway in the world that I drop back in a month of idleness as much as I gain in a year’s sowing.”  At last in the autumn of that year Lincoln addresses to Speed a question at once so shrewd and so daringly intimate as perhaps no other man ever asked of his friend.  “The immense sufferings you endured from the first days of September till the middle of February” (the date of Speed’s wedding) “you never 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.”