Lamon's _Life of Lincoln_ lashed into greater fury the tempest that already raged concerning Lincoln's religious faith. Nor was this the only criticism upon it. It was the first of the Lives of Lincoln to which the later term of "muckraking" might have been applied, and its spirit of hostility is best accounted for by the fact that its real author was not Lamon but Black, who not only entertained all the local prejudice which one element in Springfield had against Lincoln, but represented also a bitter political hostility, Black's father having been a member of Buchanan's Cabinet. Indeed there is alleged to have been a three-cornered and acrimonious dispute among the publishers, Lamon, and Black concerning an omitted chapter on Buchanan's administration which had something to do with one aspect of the book's financial failure. Black and Lamon and the publishers all lost money and the book was a financial disaster. Notwithstanding its tone of astonishing bitterness against Lincoln, its shocking bad taste and its perverted viewpoint, Lamon's biography is a valuable source of information. Concerning it John Hay wrote to Lamon, "Nothing heretofore printed can compare with it in interest, and from the nature of the case all subsequent writers will have to come to you for a large class of facts." In 1895 Lamon's daughter Dorothy, subsequently Mrs. Teillard, published a book of "Recollections" of Lincoln by her father, with no objectionable matter, and with a considerable number of valuable incidents. But this later book, while avoiding the occasions of criticism which the first book evoked, added little to the character study which the first volume, with all its manifold defects, had contained. Lamon was a very different man from Lincoln--so different that men who knew them both wondered at Lincoln's fondness for him. And he knew Lincoln intimately. But he was not capable of interpreting the best that was in Lincoln. CHAPTER X THE REED LECTURE ONE of the first results of the Lamon biography was a lecture prepared by Rev. James A. Reed, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield. This lecture[35] was delivered several times, and in 1873 was published in _Scribner's Magazine_, which at that time was edited by J. G. Holland. Holland had been horrified by the Lamon biography, and had reviewed it with such disfavor that Herndon attributes the failure of the book in no small part to Holland's pronounced opposition. This lecture, published in so widely read a magazine, produced a profound impression. A doubt which Lamon had raised and which Herndon later had the bad taste to emphasize concerning Lincoln's paternity turned to good advantage; and Reed produced from several of the men whom Lamon had quoted, counter-statements declaring that they had been misquoted. Of these was James H. Matheny, whose statement to Herndon we are to consider in connection with the story of Lincoln's burnt book and who wrote to Dr. Reed: