In the year 1840 he became engaged to be married to Miss Mary Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky, a young lady of good education and excellent connections, who was visiting her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, at Springfield. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] The engagement was not in all respects a happy one, as both parties doubted their compatibility, and a heart so affectionate and a conscience so sensitive as Lincoln's found material for exquisite self-torment in these conditions. His affection for his betrothed, which he thought was not strong enough to make happiness with her secure; his doubts, which yet were not convincing enough to induce him to break off all relations with her; his sense of honor, which was wounded in his own eyes by his own act; his sense of duty, which condemned him in one course and did not sustain him in the opposite one--all combined to make him profoundly and passionately miserable. To his friends and acquaintances, who were unused to such finely wrought and even fantastic sorrows, his trouble seemed so exaggerated that they could only account for it on the ground of insanity. But there is no necessity of accepting this crude hypothesis; the coolest and most judicious of his friends deny that his depression ever went to such an extremity. Orville H. Browning, who was constantly in his company, says that his worst attack lasted only about a week; that during this time he was incoherent and distraught; but that in the course of a few days it all passed off, leaving no trace whatever. "I think," says Mr. Browning, "it was only an intensification of his constitutional melancholy; his trials and embarrassments pressed him down to a lower point than usual." [Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. From the original in the Keyes Lincoln Memorial Collection, Chicago.] [Sidenote: "Western Characters," p. 134.]