The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-02-12

III bring Mary back if youn agree to marry
her"
Marry her? I'd be delighted" said Lincoln.
Mrs. Able went away and a month or so later
she was in Springfield again and she had her
sister with her.
Lincoln went to call. When he saw Mary
Owens he gasped. The girl had grown enor-
mously. She had become outrageously fat.
We'll, I've brought her back for you to marry
according to promise" said Mrs. Able.
She was joking, but Lincoln wasn't sure wheth-
er it was a jest or whether she was serious
and was cloaking her feelings in the light man
ner in which she spoke. He called regularly upon
Miss Owens and paid to her all the attention he
thought an engaged man should. 1t was not
pleasant, however, for she was enormous in size.
To make the situation still more absurd, he was
very tall and very thin. The contrast between
the two was enough to make any person smile,
no matter how gloomy he might be.
Lincoln worried greatly over the situation. He
felt that he was in honor bound to marry the
lady, but he dreaded the taking of such {. step.
But while Lincoln had due regard for the
sanctity of his promise, implied or otherwise, he
tried hard to make Miss Owens understand that
he was not a desirable partner for life. He wrote
to her some of the queerest love letters that per-
haps any man ever penned. He told her over and
over again what a miserable life she would have
with him. In one of them he said:
81 am afraid you would not be satisfied. There
is a great deal of fourishing about in carriages
here in Springfield, which it would be your doom
to see without sharing. You would have to be
poor without the means of hiding your poverty.
Do you believe you could bear that patiently?"
Another time he wrote to her:
Il know | should be much happier with you
than the way | am, provided l saw no signs of
discomfort in you. What you have said to me
may have been in the way of jest, or | may have
misunderstood it. If so, then let it be forgotten;
If otherwise, | wish you would think seriously
before Won decide. What I have said would
most positively abide by, provided you wish II.
My opinion is that you had better not do it. You
have not been accustomed to hardship and it
may be more serious than you now imagine. ]
know you are capable of thinking concretely on
any subject and If you deliberate maturely upon
this before you decide, then l am willing to abide
your decision"
Lovers Tears and Quarrels.
Evidently Miss Owens had some spirit. She
sent a reply to one of his letters that stunned
him. She rejected him incontinently, and she
piqued his pride in doing it, for she told him that
he was deficient in those links which make up
the chain of a woman's happiness"
You would not think of Lincoln as a dancing
man, yet he did at times indulge in that pastime.
There are some records extant in proof of this,
They take the form of cotillion notices printed
at the time he was thirty years old and a little
before his meeting with Mary Todd.
Like Mary Owens, Mary Todd was a Ken
tuckian, and, like Mary Owens, she had a sister
LINcoLN'S TRUE klNDLiNESs.
Mrs. Amanda Kuhn died some months ago in
Philadelphia at the age of eighty-four. During
the Civil war her husband was wounded and she
went to the hospital at Washington with her only
baby to nurse him. He recovered, but she stayed
to nurse others. There Lincoln saw her and was
deeply impressed with the woman's devotion to
the needs of the injured. Her baby attracted him,
and, realizing that the child was a burden and
anxiety to the loyal nurse, he arranged for its
care in the White House while the mother was
busy in the hospital. That was like him. 1t is
merely another story of the many that mark
Lincoln as the biggest man the modern world has
known.