We have here our one witness that Mr. Lincoln while at New Salem,[41] freshly risen from the reading of Volney and Paine, and having what Lamon called the "itch for writing" wrote some kind of essay adverse to the doctrines of Christianity as Lincoln then understood them. Matheny never saw the book and never talked with anyone so far as we know who had seen it, excepting Lincoln himself, who told him in confidence that he had written such an essay. The fact that Matheny says that he "got it as a secret" would seem to indicate that Lincoln had no pride in it, and his reference to Herndon's insistence indicates that Herndon had no other source of information. Lincoln did, then, write something of this character and it may have been burned; though it is extremely doubtful whether it met so spectacular a fate or was anything like so formidable a document as tradition has represented it. It will be noted that Colonel Matheny says nothing about the burning of the book. Herndon got that item from some other source, and apparently misunderstood it. This information, apparently, Herndon picked up on the occasion of his visit to New Salem. Samuel Hill may, indeed, have reminded Lincoln that if he intended to run for the Legislature against Peter Cartwright, it would be better for him not to be known as an infidel; and indeed if Lincoln was known as an infidel, Peter Cartwright was not the man to have failed to remind him of it. But at the time when Samuel Hill snatched something out of Lincoln's hand and threw it into the fire he was not concerned so much about Lincoln's political future as he was about something else. The document which Samuel Hill burned contained very little about theology. When on an evening in November, 1866, Mr. Herndon, but lately returned from his visit to the site of New Salem, delivered in the old court house in Springfield before a small and critical audience his lecture on Ann Rutledge, he informed his hearers that in 1834 that sweet young girl of nineteen was simultaneously loved by three men, one of whom was Abraham Lincoln. He omitted the names of the other two, and filled in their place in the manuscript with blanks. The world has long since learned the other two names, of John McNamur and Samuel Hill. Herndon's reason for concealing them at the time was probably the fact that their descendants were living near, but those descendants are well aware of it now, and have been for years.