The House was convulsed with laughter, and the member from Wabash dropped his “unconstitutional” dodge.

Mr. Lincoln grew rapidly in public favour as a lawyer, and within ten years after he left his log-cabin home, in Macon County, citizens of Springfield would point him out to strangers on the street, and say: “One of the ablest lawyers in Illinois.”

His partnership with Mr. Stuart terminated in 1840, and he soon after associated himself with Judge S. T. Logan. He married Miss Mary Todd, daughter of Honorable Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky, in 1842, when he was thirty-three years of age. The fruits of this marriage were four sons, viz., Robert, Edwards, William, and Thomas. Edwards died in infancy; William died at the age of twelve years, in Washington; Thomas died in Illinois at the age of twenty; and Robert afterwards became secretary of war at Washington.

Soon after his marriage he wrote two letters, which so reveal his strong friendships as well as his simplicity of character that we quote a brief extract from each. The first he wrote to his old friend, J. F. Speed, of Louisville, Kentucky, and in addition to the characteristics of the man which it reveals, it discloses somewhat his humble mode of living. “We are not keeping house, but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now by a widow by the name of Beck. Boarding only costs four dollars a week. I most heartily wish you and your Fanny 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 be merry together for a while.”

The other letter was penned to newly-married friends in another State, about a month after his own marriage. “I have no way of telling you how much happiness I wish you both, though I believe you both can conceive it. I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now, for you will be so exclusively concerned for one another that I shall be forgotten entirely. I regret to learn that you have resolved not to return to Illinois: I shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably things seem to be arranged in this world! If we have no friends we have no pleasure, and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here, yet I own I have no right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times more sacred than any you can owe to others, and in that light let them be respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to remain with her relatives and friends. As to friends, she could not need them anywhere,—she would have them in abundance here. Write me often, and believe me, yours for ever, Lincoln.” His heart was in his pen, as it usually was in his hand.