About the time Mr. Lincoln was admitted to the bar, Miss Mary Owens, a bright and beautiful young woman from Kentucky, came to visit her married sister near New Salem. The sister had boasted that she was going to "make a match" between her sister and Lawyer Lincoln. The newly admitted attorney smiled indulgently at all this banter until he began to consider himself under obligations to marry Miss Owens if that young lady proved willing. After he went to live in Springfield, with no home but his office, he wrote the young lady a long, discouraging letter, of which this is a part: "I am thinking of what we said about your coming to live in Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied. There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing it. You would have to be poor without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe that you could bear that patiently? 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 could make me more unhappy than to fail in that effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no sign of discontent in you. "I much wish you would think seriously before you decide. What I have said, I will most positively abide by, provided you wish it. You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more severe than you now imagine. I know you are capable of thinking correctly on any subject, and if you deliberate maturely upon this before you decide, then I am willing to abide by your decision. "Yours, etc., "LINCOLN." For a love letter this was nearly as cold and formal as a legal document. Miss Owens could see well enough that Lawyer Lincoln was not much in love with her, and she let him know, as kindly as she could, that she was not disposed to cast her lot for life with an enforced lover, as he had proved himself to be. She afterward confided to a friend that "Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman's happiness." THE EARLY RIVALRY BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS