initials M. C. stood for, at length he learned. They stood for the title "Miserable Cuss."

When Charles Farrar Browne began writing these letters for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he probably had little intention of going into military or political matters. He may or may not have known that the name he chose for himself, Artemus Ward, was, except for a slight variation in spelling, the name of a Revolutionary general.

Much of the quality which caused his humor to be most appreciated in its day was due to current interest in matters concerning which taste has changed and memory of events grown dim. But a student of the period of the Civil War would have no difficulty in understanding Lincoln's appreciation of this war-time humor. Artemus Ward may not have gone the full length of his generous offer in sacrificing all of his wife's relations to the putting down of the rebellion. But his broad wholesome humor together with his understanding of military and political conditions and his intelligent sympathy with Lincoln in the burdens he was bearing certainly contributed effectively to that result. He did help put down the rebellion.

CHAPTER XXX

MRS. LINCOLN

THE tomb at Oak Ridge received the mortal remains of Abraham Lincoln, and left his widow in her almost solitary grief. How alone she was, and how worse than useless was some of the advice she had, is pitifully evidenced in a book that betrayed her confidence and proclaimed to the public her aberrations and follies. Not yet has the world been just to her. I should like, if I can, to give a fair and truthful picture of that much abused

woman.

If the light that beats upon a throne is such as to reveal every sad frailty of him who occupies it, the light that glances upon and within the White House is still more cruelly searching. Not without reason has the presidency been declared a man-killing job. The bullet has killed three of our presidents; but these are not our only presidential murders. It is no part of the prerogative of this book to compile a list of them.

But if we are unintentionally cruel to our presidents, what shall be said of the manner in which we treat their wives? Who among them has escaped idle curiosity and even spiteful slander, from staid Martha Washington and gay Dolly Madison down to the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and Mrs. Warren G. Harding?

No woman who has occupied the White House has been more vulnerable to attack than Mary Todd Lincoln; and no one of them, unless possibly the wife of President Andrew Jackson, suffered such merciless slander. The time has come when it

*Behind the Scenes, by Elizabeth Keckly.

should be possible to tell the truth and the whole truth concerning Mary Todd Lincoln.

Both by birth and breeding, Mary Todd Lincoln was a proud and ambitious woman. In her girlhood she was admired rather than loved; for though she had a generous nature, and on occasion could go to great lengths of devotion for those she liked, she had a quick wit and a sharp tongue.

She was affectionate, ardent, passionate, and to a hot temper she joined a stubborn will. She married Abraham Lincoln as deliberately as such a woman ever could do anything. She was a creature of impulse, but she had her choice. She selected Abraham Lincoln from among her many suitors for two reasons; he was likely to gratify her ambition, and she sincerely cared for him.

Their courtship was tempestuous. We ignore all disputable details; they quarreled; they were foredoomed to quarrel. After their marriage, they still quarreled. He annoyed her often, infuriated her sometimes, by his disregard of convention and his lack of appreciation of her feelings. He was thick-skinned and oblivious of minor discomforts; she was sensitive to a degree.

Usually he bore her outbursts of temper with good-natured imperturbability; it did Mary good to scold, and did not hurt him. If she continued to scold, he put on his hat and walked to the office or to a seat in the corner store, and returned serenely after the storm had blown over. But there were times (and this is a part of the story as yet untold), when even his thick skin wore through. Once in a long while his sluggish but vehement temper got the better of him; and when it did, he said and did things which afterward caused him bitter self-reproach.

Those do greatly err who say that Mary Todd married Abraham Lincoln out of spite or revenge, or that he married her solely out of ambition. The fact is, that, spite of all their quarrels, they cared for each other.

Lincoln was a man of great ambition. He wanted office, al

ways wanted it; and when in office always wanted a higher office. Ambition was the main spring of his career. Mary Todd was quite as ambitious as her husband, and had quite as sound judgment as he with regard to the best way to realize their ambition. She knew practical ways of assisting him, and she employed those ways.

Those who represent the married life of the Lincolns as unbroken by disagreement and quarrel hold their opinions in the face, or in ignorance, of a large body of incontrovertible evidence. On the other hand, those who assume that Lincoln and his wife did nothing but quarrel, are even more in error. Congenial they certainly were not, and they made each other uncomfortable. She nagged him unmercifully, and made home a place where he could not be assured of comfort. That was well for him. He was a man too fond of ease to have been successful in political life if wedded to a woman who made an ideal home.

That Lincoln felt the lack of a quiet and happy home life is undeniable, but he felt it less than a more finely sensitive man would have done. To spend his week-ends in distant taverns, while other members of the bar packed their saddle-bags and went home, was less of a trial to Lincoln than it would have been to most of them. But in his own big, undemonstrative, imperturbable way, Lincoln loved his wife, and was enormously proud of her. No letters are preserved which he sent home while away in those early days, but his telegrams and despatches addressed to her in the absences of Mrs. Lincoln from Washington showed real solicitude and careful consideration. He was proud of her beauty, her wit. Like other big men who have little wives, he enjoyed "the long and short" of their matrimonial combination. Usually he spoke of her as "Mrs. Lincoln," but in his letters to Speed he called her by his pet name for her, "Mollie."

It has been charged that Mrs. Lincoln's political faith was very different from that of her husband. It is true that after the

death of Mr. Lincoln, she wrote letters of complaint in which she spoke of "the Republicans" as though she were not of them; but this had reference to personal grievances and apparent neglect. So far as I am aware no such letters exist for the period in which Lincoln was living. Her letters to her family in the years before the war, when the Republican Party was forming, and Mr. Lincoln was casting in his lot with them, show no lack of interest in his movements, but on the contrary display an active and intelligent support of him in all his plans. Thus she wrote to her sister in Kentucky on November 23, 1856:

Your husband, like some of the rest of ours, has a great taste for politics and has taken much interest in the late contest, which has resulted much as I expected, not as I hoped. Although Mr. Lincoln is or was a Fremont man, you must not include him with so many of those who belong to that party, an abolitionist. In principle he is far from it. All he desires is that slavery shall not be extended, let it remain where it is. My weak woman's heart was too southern in feeling to sympathize with any one but Fillmore. I have always been a great admirer of his-he made so good a President, and is so good a man, and feels the necessity of keeping the foreigners within bounds. If some of you Kentuckians had to deal with the Wild Irish as we housekeepers are sometimes called upon to do, the South would certainly elect Fillmore next time. The Democrats have been defeated in our state in their governor; so there is a crumb of comfort for each and all. What day is so dark that there is no ray of sunshine to penetrate the gloom? Now sit down, and write one of your agreeable missives, and do not wait for a return of each from a staid matron, and, moreover, the mother of three noisy boys.

Thus did Mrs. Lincoln write to her sister, Mrs. Ben Hardin Helm, just after the defeat of Frémont, wishing that the next president, to be elected presumably by the South, might be Fillmore. The South did not elect the next president, and the next president was not Fillmore. But the notable thing about this letter, and it is not the only such letter, is that Mrs. Lincoln wrote