My friend:  By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness.  A gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky, and was taking them to a farm in the South.  They were chained six and six together.  A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient distance from the others, so that the negroes were strung together precisely like so many fish upon a trotline.  In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board.  One, whose offence for which he had been sold was an overfondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually, and the others danced, sang, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day to day.  How true it is that ’God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,’ or in other words, that he renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while he permits the best to be nothing better than tolerable.  To return to the narrative:  When we reached Springfield I stayed but one day, when I started on this tedious circuit where I now am.  Do you remember my going to the city, while I was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it?  Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so much that about a week since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone, the consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that I can neither talk nor eat.

Your sincere friend, A. Lincoln.

1842 To Joshua F. Speed—­on marriage

January 3?, 1842.

My dear speed:—­Feeling, as you know I do, the deepest solicitude for the success of the enterprise you are engaged in, I adopt this as the last method I can adopt to aid you, in case (which God forbid!) you shall need any aid.  I do not place what I am going to say on paper because I can say it better that way than I could by word of mouth, but, were I to say it orally before we part, most likely you would forget it at the very time when it might do you some good.  As I think it reasonable that you will feel very badly some time between this and the final consummation of your purpose, it is intended that you shall read this just at such a time.  Why I say it is reasonable that you will feel very badly yet, is because of three special causes added to the general one which I shall mention.