Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-08-16
there were nc lady members in the so- ciety:
 Whatever sp,teful fools may say,
 Each jealous, ranting yelper, No woman ever went astray
 Without q man to heln her

1 4Nb WoinA4 ever Went Rkbfay
 Without man to help her.
 But notwithstanding these diversions Lincoln's star was now in the ascend l ant, His legislative career, his signal victory i'll the debate at the Presbyterian church, when he measured swords with Douglas, LamboTn and Calhoun, aud his marked success at the bar gave him prominence not easily earned in the growing society of the state capital Ell dowed with the same ambition which any other young man would have pos 1 sessed had he flourished amid the same environments, we are prepared to learn that he now began to contemplate with true philosopdie reasoning tie value and propriety of marriage. Anne Rut- ledge WAS iii her grave, the Irritation with discreet Mary Owens had passed, and fate now leads him suitor for the hand of Mary Toddl Of this tempestu- ous and reactionary eourtship and of Its importance as factor i'll Mir. Lin- coln's fortunes, but little is left for me to say. What Mir Herndon, whose knowledge and sources of information have been unchallenged, has omitted to say on that subject has, it occurs to me, been fully supplied by the late Adam Badeau and certain others who have al ready testified. The strange commin- gling of passion and pathos, the uneaten wedding supper, the surprised and dis appointed guests, the melancholy groom wandering half demented through the woods at midnight, the proud, broken hearted, expectant bride led in tears to her chamber. These all constitute a drama scarcely paralleled anywhere in history.
 might have shed some light on the hitherto unexplained features of this eourtship myself, for I located some time ago a most important witness-a participant, in fact, in the drama, who had outlived all the others-but she was a woman, and, with q woman's deter imitation, refused to testify She proved inyincible alike to coercion and en- treaty, and although, for time, hoped the knowledge of the good she might do history would ultimately ill., duee her to unseal her lips, yet was obliged at last to give up in despair. She was the widow of Simeon Francis, who for years was the editor of The San gamon Journal. Her tact and diploma cy brought together under her own roof Lincoln and Mary Todds in the summer of 1842, after their unfortunate estrange- ment, and thus effected reconciliation. Perhaps if Mrs Francis had never giv- ell her party and had not brought these strange lovers together by her cordial reintroduetion they might have contin- ued ill their paths, then so far diver gent, and never have met again, and if things had so happened, according to the reasoning of Herndon, Matheny and others, Lincoln never would have been president. Indeed, the marriage, notwithstanding this meeting, might not have taken place when it did but for the intervention of what is known as the duel with James Shields.
 This seliocomic, if not grotesque, af- fair has been so glossed over by most of Mr, Lincoln's bicgraphers, only two of whom give any of the correspondence, one might almost believe it myth. Time aud place forbid the narrative i'll detail here but l cannot refrain, in view of it's importance in connection with other peculiarly human episodes in Mr. Lincoln's life, from giving it something more than a passing notice The following extract from one of the letters published in The Sangamon Jour nal will serve to indicate the general character of the publications which aroused MT. Shields ire and led at last to the challenge. The letter is signed 'Rebecea, ; and is supposed to be the lament of poor widow in Lost town ship who, unable to meet her taxes, is disposed to criticise the so called extray- agance of the Democratic state govern ment. The most conspicuous figure in the political horizon at Springfield then was James Shields, the auditor on whose head she lays all the blame for her depressed financial condition.
 T seed him when l was down iD Springfield last winter, she writes. ''Fhey had a sort of gatherin there one night among the grandees they called fair. All the gals about town was there, and all the handsome widows and mar ried women finicl1in about tryin to look like gals, tied as tight in the middle and putfed out at both ends like bundles of fodder that hadn't been stacked yet, but wanted stackin pretty bad And they had tables all around the house kiyered over with caps and pineushions and 150, coo such little knicklnacks, tryin to sell 'em to the fellows that was bowin and scrapin and kungeerin about 'e1n. They wouldn't let no Dem ocrats in for fear they q disgust the la- dies or scare the little girls or dirty the foor. l locked ill at the window, and there was this same fellow Shields float i'll about ill the air without heft or earthly substance, just like lot of cat fur where cats had been fghtin. N And the sweet distress he seemed to be inl His vely features i'll the ecstatic agony of his soul spoke audibly and dis