married in the next year, and in his cold loneliness so doubled,
Lincoln harked back to the flame. She ought never to have forgiven
him for the slight, but it was not possible for her to repay him with
poetic justice by rejoicing Stephen A. Douglas, as that gentleman had
looked elsewhere for matrimonial recompense. Lincoln and Miss Todd,
in 1842, renewed the old plight and never again were divided.


* * * * *


THE BURLESQUE DUEL.

Lincoln was plunged willy-nilly into the society he shunned at
home, on entering the legislature at Springfield. A newspaper there
published the account--from her side--of a young lady's difference
with a noted politician, General James Shields. He married a sister
of Lincoln's wife, and there was a feud between them. Shields flew
to the editor to demand the name of the maligner, as he called the
correspondent, or the editor must meet him with dueling weapon--or
his horsewhip. In the Western States the whip was snapped at literary
men as the cane was flourished in England at the date, 1842.

The editor consulted with Lincoln as a lawyer and a friend. With his
enmity as to Shields, the friend promptly advised him to say "I did
it!" This was, in fact, sheer justice, for it was Lincoln's wife who
uttered the articles. And, by the way, their style and rustic humor
were much in the vein of the "Widow Bedott" and the "Samantha" papers
of later times. Mrs. Lincoln was not the mere housekeeper the scribes
accuse her of being. Lincoln knew what was her value when he read