Lincoln, the unknown

Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln hadn't been engagedvery long before she wanted to make him over. She didn't likeShe often contrasted him with her father.the way he dressed.Almost every morning for a dozen years she had seen RobertTodd walking down the streets of Lexington, carrying a goldheadedcane, clad in a blue broadcloth coat, and wearing whitelinen trousers strapped under his boots. But Lincoln in hotweather didn't wear a coat at all; and what was worse, sometimeshe didn't wear even a collar. Usually he had only onegallus holding up his trousers, and when a button came offhe whittled a peg and pinned things together with that.Such crudeness irritated Mary Todd, and she told him so.But, unfortunately, she didn't use any tact or diplomacy orsweetness in her telling.Though at Madame Victorie Charlotte Le Clere Mentelle'sschool back in Lexington she had been taught to dance thecotillion, she had been taught nothing about the fine art of handlingpeople. So she took the surest way, the quickest way toshe nagged. She made Lincoln so un-annihilate a man's love:comfortable that he wanted to avoid her. Instead of coming tosee her two or three nights a week now, as he had formerlydone, he sometimes let ten days drift by without calling; and shewrote him complaining letters, censuring him for his neglect.Presently Matilda Edwards came to town. Matilda was a tall,stately, charming blonde, a cousin of Ninian W. Edwards, Mary55