A PUT-UP JOB--OR CHANCE? The ways of the petitioner are deep and mysterious. The Virginia (Illinois) _Enquirer_, March 1, 1879, had the following: "John McNamer (Namara?) was buried last Sunday, near Petersburg, Menard County. He was an early settler and carried on business at New Salem. Abe Lincoln was the postmaster there and kept a store. It was here that, at the tavern, dwelt the fair Annie Rutledge, in whose grave Lincoln wrote that his heart was buried. As the story runs, the fair and gentle Annie was John's sweetheart, but Abe took 'a shine' to her, and succeeded in heading off Mac, and won her affections. During the war, a Kentucky lady went to Washington with her daughter to procure her son's pardon for being a guerrilla. The daughter was a musician. Sitting at the piano while her mother was sewing, she sang 'Gentle Annie.' While it was being charmingly rendered, Abe rose from his seat, crossed the room to a window, and gazed out for several minutes with that sad, 'far-away' look noticed as one of his particularities. When he returned to his seat he wrote a note which, as he said, was the pardon besought. The scene proves that Mr. Lincoln was a man of fine feelings, and that, if the occurrence was a put-up job on the lady's part, it accomplished the purpose all the same." * * * * * LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE. In 1839, another Kentucky belle [Footnote: Addressing Kentuckians in a speech made at Cincinnati, in 1859, Lincoln said: "We mean to marry our girls when we have a chance; and I have the honor to say I once did have a chance in that way."] arrived in Illinois to follow the steps of her sister, who had found a conquest there. This Mrs. Edwards introduced Miss Mary Todd, and she became the belle of the Sangamon bottom. Lincoln was pitted against another young lawyer, afterward the eminent Stephen A. Douglas, but, odd as it appears, Miss Todd singled out the Ugly Duckling as the more eligible of the two. Whatever the reason--strange in a man knowing how to bide his time to win--Lincoln wrote to the lady, withdrawing from the contest, allowed to be hopeless by him. His friend Speed would not bear the letter, but pressed him to have a face-to-face explanation. The rogue--who was in the toils himself, and was shortly wedded--believed the parley would remove the, perhaps, imaginary hindrance. But Miss Todd accepted the deliverance; thereupon they parted--but immediately the reconciliation took place. The nuptials were settled, but here again Lincoln displayed a waywardness utterly out of keeping with his subsequent actions. He "bolted" on the wedding-day--New-year's, 1841. Searching for him, his friends--remembering the fit after the Rutledge death--found him in the woods like the Passionate Pilgrim of ancient romance. Luckily he was inspirited by them with a feeling that an irrepressible desire to live till assured that the world is "a little better for my having lived in