Then Lincoln offered her his heart and she consented, asking only time enough to write to her lost lover. No answer to the letter came. Week after week passed. And then Lincoln was accepted. But, alas, the strain had been too great, and the abandoned young beauty grew mortally ill. On her deathbed she called for Lincoln continually, and when he came they left him alone with her for farewell. Afterwards he went to her grave and wept like a child. “My heart lies buried there,” he said. [Illustration: Lincoln in 1857] Poor, honest, ugly Lincoln! That tragedy saddened his life, and years afterwards he could not refer to Anne Rutledge without tears. So terrible was the effect of her death upon him that for a time his friends feared for his reason. He would wander in the woods a victim to despair. To a companion who urged him to forget his loss he groaned, “I cannot; the thought of the snow and rain on her grave fills me with indescribable grief.” Finally, he was taken to a friend’s house and there watched and comforted through days of deep torment, bordering on madness, till he could bear to go out again among men. Lincoln went to the Legislature at Vandalia in a coarse suit of jeans, but most of the Illinois lawmakers wore jeans and coonskin caps. It cannot be honestly said that he was a brilliant or important lawmaker, although his great height, immense strength, quaint, sharp wit and never-failing stories made him a popular figure at the State capital. His mind was too much occupied with the study of the law. He had resumed an acquaintance, formed during the Black Hawk war, with Major John T. Stuart, who encouraged him to become a lawyer, and loaned him books. Curiously enough he seemed to desire no teacher, but followed his course of studies alone. Self-reliance was his strongest trait, self-reliance and endless work. Those who attempt to account for Lincoln’s remarkable rise in life are apt to overlook the terrific mental grind to which he subjected himself for so many years; and, as we value most that which we get through stress and sacrifice and pain, so the things which Lincoln dug out of his books were never forgotten. Perhaps, in these easy days, when education is pressed upon all, there is a lesson to be found in the story of this man who laid firm foundations for his after life of greatness by taking upon himself the whole responsibility for searching after sound knowledge and principles.