Eleanor Atkinson

“ They sing not only of dead loves, but of deathless love, and they contract the heart of youth with no fear of bereavement. Young love is always secure, thrice ringed around with protecting spells and enchantment; death an alien thing in some distant star. The banks of the Sangamon bloomed fresh and fair that golden summer, the meadow-lark sang unreproached, the flowing of the river accompanied only dreams of fuller life. ”

“ Ann never teased; she was just simple and sincere and sweet. But it would be instinctive with her to pick up the grammar as an excuse for the stroll along the bluff with her lover.
Of an oak or a maple, no matter how dense the foliage, one has a distinct image of the individual leaf; but of the sycamore—the American plane-tree—you may see thousands, and carry away only an impression of a silvery column and an enormous dome of green gossamer—a diaphanous mesh of vernal lace, whose pattern dissolves momently in the sun, and frays and ravels in the wind. ”

“ Often the two were seen under a giant sycamore, on a hill below the town and overlooking the river, Ann puzzling over conjugations, Lincoln sprawled at her feet reading Blackstone’s Commentaries. It was such an extraordinary thing in that unlettered region that it was remarked ever after by those who saw it. It was an affair of public interest, and now of publicly expressed satisfaction at the happier turn of events. The world not only loves a lover, but it loves wedding bells at the end of the story. ”

“ He was returning from Vandalia, Illinois, then the capital, and his first term in the state legislature, to the backwoods village of New Salem that had been his home for four years. The last twenty miles of the journey, from the town of Springfield, he made on a hired horse. The landscape through which he rode that April morning still holds its enchantment; the swift, bright river still winds in and out among the wooded hills, for the best farming lands lie back of the gravelly bluffs, on the black loam prairie. But three-quarters of a century ago central Illinois was an almost primeval world. ”

“ So Lincoln’s mother had dwindled to an early grave, lacking nourishment for the spirit. Courtship, even, was elemental, robbed of its hours of irresponsible idleness, its faery realm of romance. To see anyone rise above the hard, external facts of life touched the imagination of the dullest. In his public aspect a large part of Lincoln’s power, at this time, was that he expressed visibly community aspirations that still lay dormant and unrecognized. Now, he and Ann expressed the capacities of love of the disinherited. ”

“ When she fell into a coma, Lincoln stumbled out of that death-chamber like a soul gone blind and groping. Two days later Ann Rutledge died.
As a pebble falling from a peak in the Alps may start an avalanche on its path of destruction, so one man’s unconsidered sin may devastate many lives. ”

“ In every sparsely settled community there is much curiosity about the unusual event, and some malice toward misfortune. Here offensive gossip ran about. It was reported that McNamar was a fugitive from justice—a thief, a murderer, that he already had a wife in the East. The talk enraged her father, and enveloped sweet Ann Rutledge in an atmosphere of blight. The truth—that he had tired of her—was surely not so bad as these rumours of criminal acts. With that element of the maternal that underlies the love of women for men, she came to the defence of his good name. ”

“ What searching self-revelations by which youth leads love back through an uncompanioned past, finding there old experiences, trivial and forgotten until love touches and transforms them. Life suddenly becomes spacious and richly furnished. Lincoln’s old ties of affection were Ann’s now, dear and familiar; his old griefs. In tender retrospect she shared that tragic mystery of his childhood, his mother’s early death. ”

“ Lincoln was the New Salem postmaster. In his journeys about the country—surveying, working in the harvest field, electioneering—he carried the mail of such farms as he passed in his hat or his saddle-bags. The pioneer postmaster was the confidant of those he served, in the absence of ministers and doctors. People read to him the letters they received, complained of neglect, demanded of him sympathy in their private joys and sorrows. And so it was he came close to the grief of Ann Rutledge. ”

“ It was such a night of wind and darkness and snow, as used to cause dwellers in pioneer cabins, isolated from neighbours at all times, but now swirled about, shut in, and cut off other from human life by the tempest, to pile the big fireplace with dry cord-wood, banking it up against the huge back-log, and draw close together around the hearth, to watch the flames roar up the chimney. ”

“ Ann gave no encouragement to his suit. To Lincoln, who was reading Jack Kelso’s precious copy of Shakespeare’s plays at the time, his love must have seemed another Ophelia, crushed by unkindness, bewildered by a world in which men could break faith. As she shrank from the blunt perception of curious neighbours she came to lean more and more on Lincoln’s devotion. ”

“ He and Ann were fast friends now, and for the next year and a half he saw her daily in her most endearing aspects of elder sister and daughter. It was a big, old-fashioned family of nine children, and Ann did the sewing and much of the spinning and weaving. At meal times she waited on the long tables, bringing platters of river fish, game, and pork from the kitchen fire-place, corn and wheat bread and hominy, milk and butter, honey and maple sugar, pots of coffee, and preserves made from wild berries and honey. ”

“ Why is it that these sober old grammars, full of hard-and-fast rules—and bewildering exceptions—strewing the path of learning with needless thorns and obstructions of every sort, still instinctively chose the one verb ardent youth conjugates with no teaching at all? First person, singular number, present tense, declarative mood—I love, transitive, requiring an object to complete its meaning, as life itself requires one—you. ”

“ He saw a future of distinction and service such as he would be proud to ask Ann to share.
What pictures of men and the times he must have drawn for her! In those pioneer days only a few of the public men were backwoods lawyers like himself. Some, indeed, and many of the best, expressed the native genius and crude force that were transforming the wilderness. ”

“ But they two, with a special candle on Ann’s little sewing-table, were outside the circle of murmurous talk and laughter, the pale gold head and the raven one close together over the hard-and-fast rules of the text book! Lincoln loved her then, unconsciously, must have loved her from the first, but he was incapable of a dishonourable thought, and Ann’s heart was all McNeill’s.
After Mr. Rutledge sold the mill and tavern in 1833 and moved to a farm, Lincoln lived much of the time at Squire Bowling Green’s, on a farm a half-mile north of the town, under the brow of the bluff. ”

“ Many years ago the cabin of hewn logs was moved from under the brow of the bluff down to the bank of the river and turned into a stable. More than eighty years old now, this primitive structure that was Lincoln’s home for three years, still stands. Every spring it is threatened by freshets. ”

“ But as a young man whose fancy had fed on a few books and many dreams, it may have meant more that this beautiful girl waited on the table, laughed at his jokes—too kind of heart, too gentle of breed, to laugh at his awkwardness—and praised his wit and cleverness and strength. ”

“ Was John McNamar to go unpunished? Not an old man, he seemed to break up physically under the blow. Public sympathy was with him and with the deserted girl. Her father was her lover now, surrounding her with every attention and tender care. It was remarked in a day and place when family affection was not demonstrative. Again, in the country parlance, it was said: “James Rutledge is just wrapped up in Ann.”
A new element was added to this absorbing drama when Lincoln began to pay open court to Ann, publishing it far and wide that he would be proud to win what McNamar had not cared to keep. ”

“ In the new West ability and worth could push itself to the front as nowhere else in the world, but pioneer society was not so democratic but that birth and wealth had their claims to consideration.
Most girls, at that time, were married at eighteen, but Ann was still studying under the Scotch schoolmaster, Mentor Graham. Lincoln met her often at the “spell-downs” with which the school closed the Friday afternoon sessions. When he returned from an inglorious Indian campaign the next year, he went to the Rutledge tavern to board. ”

“ The other, not so well known, is by T. G. Onstot, son of Henry Onstot, the New Salem cooper, in his “Pioneers of Mason and Menard.” Mr. Onstot is still living, at the age of eighty in Mason City, Illinois, the sole survivor of the historic settlement on the Sangamon, and an unquestioned authority on the history of the region. He was six years old when Ann Rutledge died. He does not profess to remember her personally, but to have got her description from his father and mother. The families were next-door neighbours for a dozen years, and life-long friends. Herndon lived in Springfield. Mr. ”