that your present anxiety about her health and her life must and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her. If they can once and forever be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly for that object), surely nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery . . . It really appears to me that you yourself ought to rejoice and not sorrow at this indubitable evidence of your undying affection for her. Why, Speed, if you did not love her, although you might not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so you must pardon me. You know the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it. You know I do not mean wrong. I have been quite
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an idea of how the writer perhaps viewed Miss Todd's flirtation with Douglas: “What earthly consideration,” he asks, “would you take to find her scouting and despising you and giving herself up to another?
But of this you need have no apprehension, and therefore you cannot bring it home to your feelings.”
February 3, he writes again, acknowledging receipt of a letter dated January 25.
The object of Speed's affection had been ill, and her condition had greatly intensified his gloomy spirits.
Lincoln proffers his sympathy.
“I hope and believe,” he continues,
The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
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