DEAR SIR:—Reaching home three days ago, I found your letter of February 26th. Considering your difficulty of hearing, I think you had better settle in Chicago, if, as you say, a good man already in fair practice there will take you into partnership. If you had not that difficulty, I still should think it an even balance whether you would not better remain in Chicago, with such a chance for copartnership.
If I went west, I think I would go to Kansas, to Leavenworth or Atchison. Both of them are and will continue to be fine growing places.
I believe I have said all I can, and I have said it with the deepest interest for your welfare.
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
ACCUSATION OF HAVING BEEN PAID FOR A POLITICAL SPEECH
TO C. F. McNEIL.
SPRINGFIELD, April 6, 1860
C. F. MCNEIL, Esq.
DEAR SIR:—Reaching home yesterday, I found yours of the 23d March, inclosing a slip from The Middleport Press. It is not true that I ever charged anything for a political speech in my life; but this much is true: Last October I was requested by letter to deliver some sort of speech in Mr. Beecher's church, in Brooklyn—two hundred dollars being offered in the first letter. I wrote that I could do it in February, provided they would take a political speech if I could find time to get up no other. They agreed; and subsequently I informed them the speech would have to be a political one. When I reached New York, I for the first time learned that the place was changed to "Cooper Institute." I made the speech, and left for New Hampshire, where I have a son at school, neither asking for pay nor having any offered me. Three days after a check for two hundred dollars was sent to me at New Hampshire; and I took it, and did not know it was wrong. My understanding now is—though I knew nothing of it at the time—that they did charge for admittance to the Cooper Institute, and that they took in more than twice two hundred dollars.