The sweet violet you inclosed came safely to hand, but it was so dry, and mashed so flat, that it crumbled to dust at the first attempt to handle it.  The juice that mashed out of it stained a place in the letter, which I mean to preserve and cherish for the sake of her who procured it to be sent.  My renewed good wishes to her in particular, and generally to all such of your relations who know me.

As ever,
Lincoln.

TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

Springfield, Illinois, July 4, 1842.

Dear speed:—­Yours of the 16th June was received only a day or two since.  It was not mailed at Louisville till the 25th.  You speak of the great time that has elapsed since I wrote you.  Let me explain that.  Your letter reached here a day or two after I started on the circuit.  I was gone five or six weeks, so that I got the letters only a few weeks before Butler started to your country.  I thought it scarcely worth while to write you the news which he could and would tell you more in detail.  On his return he told me you would write me soon, and so I waited for your letter.  As to my having been displeased with your advice, surely you know better than that.  I know you do, and therefore will not labor to convince you.  True, that subject is painful to me; but it is not your silence, or the silence of all the world, that can make me forget it.  I acknowledge the correctness of your advice too; but before I resolve to do the one thing or the other, I must gain my confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves when they are made.  In that ability you know I once prided myself as the only or chief gem of my character; that gem I lost—­how and where you know too well.  I have not yet 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 understand yours afterward, by the aid you would have given me I should have sailed through clear, but that does not now afford me sufficient confidence to begin that or the like of that again.

You make a kind acknowledgment of your obligations to me for your present happiness.  I am pleased with that acknowledgment.  But a thousand times more am I pleased to know that you enjoy a degree of happiness worthy of an acknowledgment.  The truth is, I am not sure that there was any merit with me in the part I took in your difficulty; I was drawn to it by a fate.  If I would I could not have done less than I did.  I always was superstitious; I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing your Fanny and you together, which union I have no doubt He had fore-ordained.  Whatever He designs He will do for me yet.  “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, but for its reference to our friend here:  let her seeing it depend upon whether she has ever known anything of my affairs; and if she has not, do not let her.