But it was not long before there came the clashing inevitable between two persons whose tastes and ambitions were so different. Miss Todd was jealous and exacting. Lincoln frequently failed to accompany her to the merry-makings which she wanted to attend. She resented this indifference, which seemed to her a purposed slight, instead of simply a lack of thought on his part, and sometimes she went with Mr. Douglas or any other escort who offered. Reproaches and tears and misunderstanding followed. If the lovers made up, it was only to fall out again. At last Lincoln became convinced that they were incompatible, and resolved that he must break the engagement. But the knowledge that the girl loved him took away his courage. He felt that he must not draw back, and he became profoundly miserable. "Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort," Lincoln had written Miss Owens three years before. How could he make this brilliant, passionate creature to whom he was betrothed happy? A mortal dread of the result of the marriage, a harrowing doubt of his own feelings, possessed him. The experience is not so rare in the lives of lovers that it should be regarded, as it often has been, as something exceptional and abnormal in Lincoln's case. A reflective nature founded in melancholy, like Lincoln's, rarely undertakes even the simpler affairs of life without misgivings. He certainly experienced dread and doubt before entering on any new relation. When it came to forming the most delicate and intimate of all human relations, he staggered under a storm of uncertainty and suffering, and finally broke the engagement. So horrible a breach of honor did this seem to him that he called the day when it occurred the "fatal first of January, 1841," and months afterward he wrote to his intimate friend Speed: "I must regain my confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves when they are made. In that ability I once prided myself as the only or chief gem of my character; that gem I lost--how and where you know too well. I have not yet regained it, and, until I do, I cannot trust myself in any matter of much importance." [Illustration: ROBERT S. TODD. Robert S. Todd, father of Mrs. Lincoln, came of distinguished ancestors. He was the seventh son of Major-General Levi Todd, and was born at Lexington, Kentucky, February 25, 1791. He was prominent in the politics of Kentucky for nearly thirty years. For many years he was clerk of the Kentucky House of Representatives; he was three times elected Representative from Fayette County, and was a State Senator at the time of his death, which occurred July 15, 1849. He was twice married--the first time to his near relative, Eliza Ann Parker, the mother of Mary Todd.] [Illustration: MISS JULIA JAYNE, ONE OF MISS TODD'S BRIDESMAIDS.