years' excitement came later.




CHAPTER X.

SOCIAL LIFE AND MARRIAGE.


Springfield was largely settled by people born and educated in older
and more cultured communities. From the first it developed a social
life of its own. In the years on both sides of 1840, it maintained as
large an amount of such social activity as was possible in a new
frontier city. In this life Lincoln was an important factor. The public
interest in the man made this necessary, even apart from considerations
of his own personal preferences.

We have seen that he was extremely sociable in his tastes. He was fond
of being among men. Wherever men were gathered, there Lincoln went, and
wherever Lincoln was, men gathered about him. In the intervals of work,
at nooning or in the evening, he was always the center of an interested
group, and his unparalleled flow of humor, wit, and good nature was the
life of the assemblage. This had always been so from childhood. It had
become a second nature with him to entertain the crowd, while the crowd
came to look upon him as their predestined entertainer.

But Lincoln had been brought up in the open air, on the very frontier,
"far from the madding crowd." His social experience and his tastes were
with men, not ladies. He was not used to the luxuries of civilization,