It touched his acquaintances deeply, and they gave it the widest publicity." Mrs.Colonel Chapman, daughter of Dennis Hanks and a relative of Lincoln, made him a long visit previous to her marriage.

"You ask me," says she, "how Mr.Lincoln acted at home.
I can say, and that truly, he was all that a husband, father, and neighbor should be, kind and affectionate to his wife and child ('Bob' being the only one they had when I was with them), and very pleasant to all around him.

Never did I hear him utter an unkind word." It seems impossible to arrive at all the causes of Lincoln's melancholy disposition.

He was, according to his most intimate friends, totally unlike other people,--was, in fact, "a mystery." But whatever the history or the cause,--whether physical reasons, the absence of domestic concord, a series of painful recollections of his mother, of early sorrows and hardships, of Anne Rutledge and fruitless hopes, or all these combined,--Lincoln was a terribly sad and gloomy man.

"I do not think that he knew what happiness was for twenty years," says Mr.
Herndon.