Lincoln, the unknown

LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN • 45the storms came, he wept, saying that he couldn't bear to thinkof the rain beating down upon her grave.Once he was found stumbling along the Sangamon, mumblingincoherent sentences. People feared he was losing his mind.So Dr. Allen was sent for. Realizing what was wrong, hesaid Lincoln must be given some kind of work, some activityto occupy his mind.A mile to the north of town lived one of Lincoln's closestfriends, Bowling Greene. He took Lincoln to his home, andassumed complete charge of him. It was a quiet, secluded spot.Behind the house oak-covered bluffs rose and rolled back tothe west. In front the flat bottom-lands stretched away to theSangamon River, framed in trees. Nancy Greene kept Lincolnbusy cutting wood, digging potatoes, picking apples, milkingthe cows, holding the yarn for her as she spun.The weeks grew into months, and the months into years, butLincoln continued to grieve. In 1837, two years after Ann'sdeath, he said to a fellow-member of the State Legislature:"Although I seem to others to enjoy life rapturously at times,yet when I am alone I am so depressed that I am afraid to trustmyself to carry a pocket-knife."From the day of Ann's death he was a changed individual.The melancholy that then settled upon him lifted at times forshort intervals; but it grew steadily worse, until he became thesaddest man in all Illinois.Herndon, later his law partner, said:"If Lincoln ever had a happy day in twenty years, I neverknew of it. . . . Melancholy dripped from him as he walked."From this time to the end of his life, Lincoln had a fondness,almost an obsession, for poems dealing with sorrow and death.He would often sit for hours without saying a word, lost inreverie, the very picture of dejection, and then would suddenlybreak forth with these lines from "The Last Leaf":The mossy marbles restOn the lips that he has prestIn their bloom;And the names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a yearOn the tomb.Shortly after Ann's death, he memorized a poem "Mortality"and beginning, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"