willing to abide your decision."

[Illustration: (MAP OF ILLINOIS ILLUSTRATING "_An Act to establish and
maintain a General System of Internal Improvements, in force 27th Feb.
1837_")

When the Illinois legislature adopted the above plan of internal
improvement in 1837, there was in the whole United States only about
eleven hundred miles of railroad. The above scheme provided for
thirteen hundred and fifty. The basis of the outlines used by
the committee in developing the plan was contained in a series of
resolutions offered in the beginning of the session by Stephen A.
Douglas. In the house the vote on the bill stood sixty-one in favor to
twenty-five against.]

This decidedly dispassionate view of their relation seems not to
have brought any decision from Miss Owens; for three months later
Mr. Lincoln wrote her an equally judicial letter, telling her that
he could not think of her "with entire indifference," that he in all
cases wanted to do right and "most particularly so in all cases with
women," and summing up his position as follows:

"What I do wish is that our further acquaintance shall depend
upon yourself. If such further acquaintance would contribute
nothing to your happiness, I am sure it would not to mine. If
you feel yourself in any degree bound to me, I am now willing
to release you, provided you wish it; while, on the other
hand, I am willing and even anxious to bind you faster, if I
can be convinced that it will in any considerable degree add
to your happiness. This, indeed, is the whole question with