“ ‘Well, I declare, Lincoln,’ said he, ‘I should not much wonder if you are right, for he has nearly upset me half a dozen times since starting.’
“So, putting his head out of the window, he shouted: ‘Why, you infernal scoundrel, you are drunk!’
“Upon which, pulling up his horses, and turning round with great gravity, the coachman said: ‘Bedad! but that’s the first rightful decision your Honor has given for the last twelve months.’ ”
Mr. Lincoln’s law partnership with Mr. Stuart was of brief duration. It was dissolved in 1840, and in the same year he formed a new partnership with Judge S. T. Logan, a lawyer of learning and ability.
In 1842 he formed another partnership, of a still more important character. He married Miss Mary Todd on the 4th of November of that year. Miss Todd belonged to a family of social prominence, and it is a matter of interest that, before marrying Mr. Lincoln, she is said to have had an opportunity of marrying another person, whose name was mentioned for the Presidency years before Mr. Lincoln’s. I refer to Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, who is said to have been an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of Miss Todd.
Six months after marriage, in a private letter written to an intimate friend, Mr. Lincoln refers thus to his domestic arrangements: “We are not keeping house,” he writes, “but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept by a widow lady of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr. Wallace occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a week.”
Abraham Lincoln had reached the age of thirty-three years before he ventured to marry. Circumstances had until then proved unfavorable, for his struggle with poverty had been unusually protracted. Now, however, he was settled both matrimonially and professionally, and the most important part of his life, for which he had been so long preparing, may be said to have fairly begun.
CHAPTER XII.
THE LAWYER IN HIS OFFICE AND AT HOME.
I have already told my readers something of Mr. Lincoln as a lawyer. I may add that he stood high in the estimation of his professional brethren. “For my single self,” says one, “I have for a quarter of a century regarded Mr. Lincoln as one of the finest lawyers I ever knew, and of a professional bearing so high-toned and honorable as justly, and without derogating from the claims of others, entitling him to be presented to the profession as a model well worthy of the closest imitation.”
Now these are general terms, and do not show us how the young lawyer who had risen step by step from the hardest physical labor to an honorable position at the bar, looked and spoke. Fortunately Judge Drummond, of Chicago, gives us a graphic picture of him,—and I am glad to quote it: