Evening Star Newspaper, March 3, 1935, Page 84

S M - ROM the corner .of the parlor where he towered over the men who crowded about him and guffawed at his funny stories, Abraham Lincoln stared down at his political rival, Stephen Douglas, who was most elegantly swinging through the dance the plump form of the pretty visitor from Kentucky. Miss Mary Todd was a bit short for so plump a woman, but Douglas was even shorter, a scant five-foot tall to Lincoln’s six- ~ioot four. But Douglas was thick of chest, and huge of head, and gifted with a deep-booming voice. He was from Vermont, a bit of a fop and polished by a law course in New York City, while Lincoln was lofty and lanky with a high, piercing voice that croaked from a caved-in chest; and he wore the worst-looking clothes ever seen in the prairie village of Springfield, Illinois, in 1837. When' Lincoln struck the town he might have been Don Quixote at his worst. The owner of Speed's General Store said long afterward: “I never saw so gloomy and mel- ancholy a face in my life.” All he owned on earth was in his saddle- bags. Even the horse was borrowed. But when he gave his name, Speed said: “Oh, yes, Mr. Lincoln. We Springfield folks feel we owe it mainly to you that we got the THIS WEEK DESTINY [)ANCED "T'"WICE The Story of Two Political Rivals and a Woman Who Never Gave Up A Historical Short Short Story 3, RUPERT HUGHES state capitol moved over from Vandalia.” “I'm moving over myself. Aiming to prac- tice law. I've bought me a bed, but I need bed clothes. About how much wouldthey cometo?' “‘Oh, say around seventeen dollars.’’ ““That’s just seventeen dollars beyond me,” Lincoln answered. ‘There was something about the ‘'man that made people want to take care of him. Speed said: ‘‘Well, I sleep up over the store in a big Hlustration by Gerald Leake Mary .Todd Called to Lincoln With Her Imperious Eyes. She Was Determined That, Since He Would Not Dance ‘ith Any Woman, He Must Dance With Her double bed. You're welcome to half of it. Light down.” Next the clerk of the court begged him to accept free board. He found a law partner. He paid his way with unending stories. The juries loved him. He helped get up a literary society and contributed spicy poetry of his own carpentry. When the social leader, Ninian Edwards, built a house with a parlor big enough for dances, his wife's sister, Mary Todd, came up for a visit. She was a bank president's daughter and her family connections were in high esteem. Lincoin's name was on the invitation to a cotillion party in Miss Todd's honor. The invitations were hu- morous and worded like a legal summons, so Lincoln probably drew them up. Women fascinated him but he was afraid of them and kept to the corner with the men. But women have a way of finding beautiful the men that men call ugly. They were always trying to marry Lincoln. As Mary Todd's ten or twelve starched petticoats under her “illusion’” skirt swished about the short legs of Stephen Douglas, she stared across his curls at the tall sad man in the corner and resolved in her imperious way that, since he would not dance with any woman, he must dance with her. Perhaps she asked Doug- las to send Lincoln to her. Perhaps she called him with her imperious eyes. He shambled to her and ex- plained that he could not dance round dances, but would she risk a square one with him? Who could have dreamed that this was for both of them the first Inaugural Ball? She managed to keep her pretty slippers out from under the huge flying feet of the ex-flatboatman. And she found under his uncouth hilarity something precious and pitifully in need of guidance. She had studied at a finishing school, and she sprinkled French words over her chatter. He listened infatuated as long as she would talk. She tried to work him up to a proposal, but he was woman-shy. When she tried to tease him on by floating along the Springfield side- walks with her hand on Douglas’ arm, Lincoln simply stared at her with green eyes, and kept away. People said to Mary: “Which one of those two suitors are you going to pick?” She answered, “The one that is going to be President of the United States some day"r Of course nearly every boy in the country planned to be president some day, March 3, 1935 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 Douglas? 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. It took her years to wring a 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 Year's Day, 1841. 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 a friend that he was sick. He had gone to see a 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 a shack of a hotel. Later they bought a house on the installment plan, a shabby place, and very shabbily furnished. Lincoln was the meekest man on earth, and yet in spite of his great heartache for human happiness, he filled half the people with affec- tion and trust and the other half with con- tempt. Mary whipped him along with her ruthless ambition. Douglas furnished him with un- 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 wife's half-brothers joined the exodus that began with his triumph. He was smuggled 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 groped pitifully through life like a blind and lonely Titan. One pretty fact remains in which shapeless history for once has rounded out a romance It was this: When Lincoln stood forth to make his first inaugural address to a 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's 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 kidnapiig of her children, Stephen Douglas approached and bowed and said, as he had in Springfield when he and Mary Todd first met: “‘May I have the honor of this dance?” 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 a bit of a fop and still not as tall as Mary Todd, but still the Little Giant. What thoughts must have swung with the music in Mary’s heart as it beat against the big, booming heart of the man she might have married! What thoughts might Lincoln have thought as he watched those two revolving about each other. If they had not revolved about him, he might never have known the cruelty of glory