双语·林肯传 10

10

In most respects, there wasn't a more economical housewife in all Springfield than Mary Lincoln. She was extravagant chiefly in matters having to do with showing off. She bought a carriage when the Lincolns could ill afford it and paid a neighbor's boy twenty-fve cents an afternoon for driving her about town to make social calls. The place was a mere village, and she could have walked or hired a vehicle. But no, that would have been beneath her. And no matter how poor they were, she could always fnd money for clothes costing more than she could afford.

In 1844, the Lincolns paid ffteen hundred dollars for the home of the Rev. Charles Dresser who, two years before, had performed their marriage ceremony. The house had a livingroom, kitchen, parlor, bedrooms; and, in the back yard, there was a woodpile, an outhouse, and a barn where Lincoln kept his cow and Old Buck.

At frst the place seemed to Mary Lincoln an earthly paradise; and it was, in comparison with the bleak, bare rooms of the boarding-house she had just left. Besides, she had the new-found joy and pride of ownership. But its perfections soon began to fade, and she was forever fnding fault with the home. Her sister lived in a huge two-story house, and this one was only a story and a half high. She once told Lincoln that no man who ever amounted to much lived in a story-and-a-half house.

Usually, when she asked him for anything, he never inquired whether it was necessary. “You know what you want,” he would say, “so go and get it.” But in this instance, he rebelled: the family was small, and thehouse was entirely adequate. Besides, he was a poor man: he had only fve hundred dollars when they were married, and he had not added much to it since. He knew that they couldn't afford to enlarge the house; and she knew it also; but she kept on urging and complaining. Finally, in order to quiet her, he had a contractor estimate the cost, and Lincoln told him to make it high. He did, and Lincoln showed her the fgures. She gasped, and he imagined that settled the matter.

But he was too hopeful, for the next time he went away on the circuit she called in another carpenter, got a lower estimate, and ordered the work done at once.

When Lincoln returned to Springfeld and walked down Eighth Street, he hardly recognized his own house. Meeting a friend, he inquired with mock seriousness, “Stranger, can you tell me where Mr. Lincoln lives?”

His income from the law was not large; and he often had, as he put it, “hard scratching” to meet his bills. And now he had come home to fnd a large and unnecessary carpenter bill added to his burdens.

It saddened him, and he said so.

Mrs. Lincoln answered him in the only way that she knew how to react to a criticism—with an attack. She told him testily that he had no money sense, that he didn't know how to manage, that he didn't charge enough for his services.

That was one of her favorite grievances, and many people would have backed her stand on that. The other attorneys were constantly irritated and annoyed by Lincoln's trifing charges, declaring that he was impoverishing the whole bar.

As late as 1853, when Lincoln was forty-four years old and only eight years away from the White House, he handled four cases in the McLean Circuit Court for a total charge of thirty dollars.

Many of his clients, he said, were as poor as he, and he didn't havethe heart to charge them much.

Once a man sent him twenty-fve dollars; and Lincoln returned ten, saying he had been too liberal.

In another instance, he prevented a swindler from getting hold of ten thousand dollars' worth of property owned by a demented girl. Lincoln won the case in ffteen minutes. An hour later, his associate, Ward Lamon, came to divide their fee of two hundred and ffty dollars. Lincoln rebuked him sternly. Lamon protested that the fee had been settled in advance, that the girl's brother was entirely satisfed to pay it.

“That may be,” Lincoln retorted, “but I am not satisfed. That money comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl; and I would rather starve than swindle her in this manner. You return half this money at least, or I'll not take a cent of it as my share.”

In another instance, a pension agent had charged the widow of a Revolutionary soldier half the four hundred dollars to which her pension amounted, for getting her claim allowed. The old woman was bent with age, and in poverty. Lincoln had her sue the pension agent, won the case for her, and charged her nothing. Besides, he paid her hotel bill and gave her money to buy a ticket home.

One day the Widow Armstrong came to Lincoln in great trouble. Her son Duff was charged with having murdered a man in a drunken brawl, and she pleaded with Abe to come and save the boy. Lincoln had known the Armstrongs back in New Salem. In fact, he had rocked Duff to sleep when he was a baby in the cradle. The Armstrongs had been a wild, rough lot; but Lincoln liked them. Jack Armstrong, Duff's father, had been the leader of the Clary's Grove Boys, and the renowned athlete whom Lincoln vanquished in a wrestling-match that has gone down in history.

Old Jack was dead now. Lincoln gladly went before the jury and made one of the most moving and appealing addresses of his career, andsaved the boy from the gallows.

All the widowed mother had in the world was forty acres of land, which she offered to turn over to Lincoln.

“Aunt Hannah,” he said, “you took me in years ago when I was poor and homeless, and you fed me and mended my clothes, and I shan't charge you a cent now.”

Sometimes he urged his clients to settle out of court, and charged them nothing whatever for his advice. In one instance, he refused to take a judgment against a man, saying, “I am really sorry for him—poor and a cripple as he is.”

Such kindness and consideration, beautiful though it was, didn't bring in cash; so Mary Lincoln scolded and fretted. Her husband wasn't getting on in the world, while other lawyers were growing wealthy with their fees and investments. Judge David Davis, for example, and Logan. Yes, and Stephen A. Douglas. By investing in Chicago real estate, Douglas had amassed a fortune and even become a philanthropist, giving Chicago University ten acres of valuable land upon which to erect its buildings. Besides, he was now one of the most famous political leaders in the nation.

How often Mary Lincoln thought of him, and how keenly she wished she had married him! As Mrs. Douglas she would be a social leader in Washington, wear Paris clothes, enjoy trips to Europe, dine with queens, and some day live in the White House. So she probably pictured herself in vain day-dreams.

What was her future as Lincoln's wife? He would go on like this to the end: riding the circuit for six months out of the year, leaving her alone at home, lavishing no love on her, and giving her no attention.... How different, how poignantly different, the realities of life were from the romantic visions she had once dreamed at Madame Mentelle's in the long ago!