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.  I should like to visit you again.  I should like to see that “sis” of yours that was absent when I was there, though I suppose she would run away again if she were to hear I was coming.

My respects and esteem to all your friends there, and, by your permission, my love to your Fanny.

Ever yours,
Lincoln.

A LETTER FROM THE LOST TOWNSHIPS

Article written by Lincoln for the Sangamon Journal in ridicule of James Shields, who, as State Auditor, had declined to receive State Bank notes in payment of taxes.  The above letter purported to come from a poor widow who, though supplied with State Bank paper, could not obtain a receipt for her tax bill.  This, and another subsequent letter by Mary Todd, brought about the “Lincoln-Shields Duel.”

LOST TOWNSHIPS

August 27, 1842.

Dear Mr. Printer: 

I see you printed that long letter I sent you a spell ago.  I ’m quite encouraged by it, and can’t keep from writing again.  I think the printing of my letters will be a good thing all round—­it will give me the benefit of being known by the world, and give the world the advantage of knowing what’s going on in the Lost Townships, and give your paper respectability besides.  So here comes another.  Yesterday afternoon I hurried through cleaning up the dinner dishes and stepped over to neighbor S_______ to see if his wife Peggy was as well as mout be expected, and hear what they called the baby.  Well, when I got there and just turned round the corner of his log cabin, there he was, setting on the doorstep reading a newspaper.  “How are you, Jeff?” says I. He sorter started when he heard me, for he hadn’t seen me before.  “Why,” says he, “I ’m mad as the devil, Aunt ’Becca!” “What about?” says I; “ain’t its hair the right color?  None of that nonsense, Jeff; there ain’t an honester woman in the Lost Townships than...”—­“Than who?” says he; “what the mischief are you about?” I began to see I was running the wrong trail, and so says I, “Oh! nothing:  I guess I was mistaken a little, that’s all.  But what is it you ’re mad about?”

“Why,” says he, “I’ve been tugging ever since harvest, getting out wheat and hauling it to the river to raise State Bank paper enough to pay my tax this year and a little school debt I owe; and now, just as I ’ve got it, here I open this infernal Extra Register, expecting to find it full of ‘Glorious Democratic Victories’ and ‘High Comb’d Cocks,’ when, lo and behold!  I find a set of fellows, calling themselves officers of the State, have forbidden the tax collectors, and school commissioners to receive State paper at all; and so here it is dead on my hands.  I don’t now believe all the plunder I’ve got will fetch ready cash enough to pay my taxes and that school debt.”