"Grace to Goshen, Lincoln, the statute fixes all that!"
In a letter to Speed, not long after this event, the happy bridegroom wrote:
"We are not keeping house but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now 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 (for the two). I most heartily wish you and your family will not fail to come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we will have a room prepared for you and we'll all be merry together for a while."
CHAPTER XV
Lincoln & Herndon
YOUNG HERNDON'S STRANGE FASCINATION FOR LINCOLN
Lincoln remained in the office with Judge Logan about four years, dissolving partnership in 1845. Meanwhile he was interesting himself in behalf of young William H. Herndon, who, after Speed's removal to Kentucky, had gone to college at Jacksonville, Ill. The young man seemed to be made of the right kind of metal, was industrious, and agreeable, and Mr. Lincoln looked forward to the time when he could have "Billy" with him in a business of his own.
Mrs. Lincoln, with that marvelous instinct which women often possess, opposed her husband's taking Bill Herndon into partnership. While the young man was honest and capable enough, he was neither brilliant nor steady. He contracted the habit of drinking, the bane of Lincoln's business career. As Mr. Lincoln had not yet paid off "the national debt" largely due to his first business partner's drunkenness, it seems rather strange that he did not listen to his wife's admonitions. But young Herndon seems always to have exercised a strange fascination over his older friend and partner.
While yet in partnership with Judge Logan, Mr. Lincoln went into the national campaign of 1844, making speeches in Illinois and Indiana for Henry Clay, to whom he was thoroughly devoted.