He pulled it around, saying, "Such a nuisance. What are they good for, anyhow?"
Ann laughed. "You've got it as far out of line under your left ear now as you had it before under the right," she said. "Let me fix it for you." Stepping on a foot-stool she motioned him to stand before her, and straightened his tie.
"Abraham," she said in despair before he left the house, "it's crooked again—your tie."
"Let it alone," was his answer. "The tie is all right. It's my neck that's crooked."
After he had gone Ann began spinning, piecing quilts and hemming linen in preparation for a spring wedding.
Both John Rutledge and Ann heard from Sangamon County's representative. To the father he wrote that he was forming a plan to have the state capitol moved from Vandalia to Springfield, in his opinion a much better point than the small place down the country. What he wrote to Ann nobody asked. Sometimes she let her father and mother read the letters. Once John Rutledge read, "I am glad you are so well—so strong, so happy, my little pilgrim. The world is a new world, Ann, now that I have you. I feel some insistent force pushing me on to something—I do not know what. But with the love of a woman like you, there are no heights a man dare not reach out for."
Meantime discussion in New Salem about Lincoln kept up. Almost every man in town was of the opinion that Abe was going to be somebody, but they all waited to see what he would stand for in this his first experience as representative of the people.
It came at last. Abraham Lincoln had gone on record in favor of woman suffrage and against slavery.
When this news was told in the little group of which Ole Bar happened to be one, he was for a moment struck dumb with disappointment. Then with impressive profanity he burst out, "A bar would have more sense. Couldn't he find nothin' in Vandalyer to take up but wimmin and niggers? He's ruint hisself forever."