admiration of such of the Springfield beaux as pleased her
somewhat wilful fancy, and Lincoln, being much at the Edwards
house, found himself, almost before he knew it, entangled in a
new love-affair. In the course of a twelvemonth he was engaged to
marry her, but something, nobody knows what or how, happened to
break the engagement, and to plunge him again in a very sea of
wretchedness. Nor is it necessary that we should know about it
further than that a great trouble came upon him, which he bore
nobly, after his kind. Few men have had his stern sense of duty,
his tenderness of heart, his conscience, so easy toward others,
so merciless toward himself. The trouble preyed upon his mind
until he could think of nothing else. He became unable to attend
to business, or to take any part in the life around him. Fearing
for his reason as well as for his health if this continued, his
good friend Joshua F. Speed carried him off, whether he wished or
no, for a visit to his own home in Kentucky. Here they stayed for
some time, and Lincoln grew much better, returning to Springfield
about midsummer, almost his old self, though far from happy.

An affair that helped to bring the lovers together again is so
out of keeping with the rest of his life, that it would deserve
mention "for that reason, if for no other. This is nothing less
than Lincoln's first and only duel. It happened that James
Shields, afterward a general in two wars and a senator from two
States, was at that time auditor of the State of Illinois, with
his office at Springfield. He was a Democrat, and an Irishman by
birth, with an Irishman's quick temper and readiness to take
offense. He had given orders about collecting certain taxes which
displeased the Whigs, and shortly after Lincoln came back from
Kentucky a series of humorous letters ridiculing the auditor and