Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1935-03-03

and nearly every girl expected to be the First
Lady of the Land.
OF all the men on earth Abe Lincoln looked
the least likely to reach the White House.
But Douglas2 He might well manage it.
Perhaps Mary would have married Douglas
If he had asked her. But he would not go
farther than a graceful coquetry. So Mary
went after Lincoln.
1t took her years to wiring proposal from
him, and as soon as she did. he made a COM
plete counter proposal that she release him.
She cried. He cried. Their tears mingled. The
wedding was announced for New Years
Day. 184l.
Again the Ninian Edwards mansion was
filled with guests. The wedding cake waited.
The bride in full array waited. But the bride
groom vanished.
Three weeks later he wrote to friend that
he was sick. He had gone to see doctor.
Everybody said he was crazy. He would
never have denied it. To all his other sorrows
and self-distrusts was added the dread of
insanity.
When he drifted back to Springfield, Mary
began on him again, cautiously and nearly
two years after the first wedding failed, a
second try was made. She gave the guests
notice of only an hour or two.
Once more the Edwards mansion was in
festival. The bride was triumphant. A hus-
band at last, Lincoln took his bride to shack
of hotel. Later they bought a house on the
installment plan. shabby place. and very
stability furnished.
Lincoln was the meekest man on earth, and
uot cr1tto nE hoor ~ha f0~ 1,v
happiness. he filled half the people with affec-
ton and trust and the other half with con-
tempt.
ambition. Douglas furnished him with I'M
ending battles that caught the ear of the
nation swirling in the churning chaos OF
slavery.
With the economy of a dramatist, fate
linked the two in a contest for the Presi-
dency of the United States. and Lincoln won
But the South that bore him abhorred him.
All his relations voted against him. His wifes
half-brothers joined the exodus that began
with his triumph.
He was struggled back to Washington to
escape - or rather to postpone - the assas-
sination that finally saved him from threat
ened impeachment.
Fate was undoubtedly unfair to Douglas,
as to Lincoln, as to everybody. as we our
selves are to everybody. Douglas can not
know of his posthumous reward. Lincoln
suffered all he could suffer while he lived, and
CROPPED pitifully through life like blind and
lonely Titan.
One pretty fact remains in which shapeless
history for once has rounded out romance
1t was this:
When Lincoln stood forth to make his first
inaugural address to crumbling nation at
his side stood his defeated rival. Stephen
Douglas was big enough not only to come to
his support. but to lift his lowly hand and
say to the head so far above his:
LET me hold your hat, Mr.. Lincoln"
And he stood like a page, holding his
master hat. And that night at the Inaugural
Ball. while Mary Lincoln shivered in con-
spicuous shame because the nice people of
Washington refused to honor her and them
selves with their presence and while she
shuddered at the anonymous letters she had
had falsely accusing her of having slave blood
in her veins threatening her with death and
the kidnapping of her children, Stephen
Douglas approached and bowed and said, as
he had in Springfield when he and Mary Todd
first met:
MAY have the honor of this dancer"
And once more Lincoln, towering above the
heads of the sycophants and the doubtful
friends about him. looked down to see Mary
Todd whirling elegantly in the arms of Ste
phen Douglas. who was bit of a fop and still
H~AS ALI n T. IT, = IT,