outward life called it forth like a rising ghost from the abyss of his
silences. His friends had no suspicion that in his real self, beneath
the thick disguise of his external sunniness, he was forever brooding,
questioning, analyzing, searching after the hearts of things both within
and without..

"In the winter of 1840 and 1841," writes Speed, "he was unhappy about
the engagement to his wife--not being entirely satisfied that his heart
was going with his hand. How much he suffered then on that account,
none knew so well as myself; he disclosed his whole heart to me. In the
summer of 1841 I became engaged to my wife. He was here on a visit when
I courted her; and strange to say, something of the same feeling which
I regarded as so foolish in him took possession of me, and kept me very
unhappy from the time of my engagement until I was married. This will
explain the deep interest he manifested in his letters on my account....
One thing is plainly discernible; if I had not been married and happy,
far more happy than I ever expected to be, he would not have married."

Whether or not Speed was entirely right in his final conclusion, it is
plain that he and Lincoln were remarkably alike in temperament; that
whatever had caused the break in Lincoln's engagement was repeated in
his friend's experience when the latter reached a certain degree of
emotional tension; that this paralleling of Lincoln's own experience
in the experience of the friend so like himself, broke tip for once
the solitude of his inner life and delivered him from some dire inward
terror. Both men were deeply introspective. Each had that overpowering
sense of the emotional responsibilities of marriage, which is bred in
the bone of certain hyper-sensitive types--at least in the Anglo-Saxon
race. But neither realized this trait in himself until, having blithely
pursued his impulse to the point of committal, his spiritual conscience