suddenly awakened and he asked of his heart, "Do I truly love her? Am I
perfectly sure the emotion is permanent?"

It is on this speculation that the unique group of the intimate letters
to Speed are developed. They were written after Lincoln's return to
Springfield, while Speed was wrestling with the demon of self-analysis.
In the period which they cover, Lincoln delivered himself from that same
demon and recovered Serenity. Before long he was writing: "I know what
the painful point with you is at all times when you are unhappy; it is
an apprehension that you do not love her as you should. What nonsense!
How came you to court her? Was it because you thought she deserved it
and that you had given her reason to expect it? If it was for that, why
did not the same reason make you court Ann Todd, and at least twenty
others of whom you can think, to whom it would apply with greater force
than to her? Did you court her for her wealth? Why, you said she had
none. But you say you reasoned yourself into it. What do you mean by
that? Was it not that you found yourself unable to reason yourself
out of it?" And much more of the same shrewd sensible sort,--a picture
unintentionally of his own state of mind no less than of his friend's.

This strange episode reveals also that amid Lincoln's silences, while
the outward man appeared engrossed in everyday matters, the inward
man had been seeking religion. His failure to accept the forms of his
mother's creed did not rest on any lack of the spiritual need. Though
undefined, his religion glimmers at intervals through the Speed letters.
When Speed's fiancee fell ill and her tortured lover was in a paroxysm
of remorse and grief, Lincoln wrote: "I hope and believe that your
present anxiety and distress about her health and her life must and will
forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as
to the truth of your affection for her. If they can once and forever