"Then," said Lincoln, "you must lend me two hundred dollars!"
This seemed a peculiar _sequitur_, for ordinary political logic would
have made any money that was to pass between voter and candidate move
the other way. Yet Smoot accepted the consequence entailed in part by
his own act, and furnished the money, whereby Lincoln was able to
purchase a new suit of clothes and to ride in the stage to Vandalia.
The records of this legislature show nothing noteworthy. Lincoln was
very inappropriately placed on the Committee on Public Accounts and
Expenditures; also it is recorded that he introduced a resolution to
obtain for the State a part of the proceeds of the public lands sold
within it. What has chiefly interested the chroniclers is, that at this
session he first saw Stephen A. Douglas, then a lobbyist, and said of
him: "He is the least man I ever saw." Lincoln's part seems to have been
rather that of an observer than of an actor. The account given is that
he was watching, learning, making acquaintances, prudently preparing for
future success, rather than endeavoring to seize it too greedily. In
fact, there is reason to believe that his thoughts were intent on far
other matter than the shaping of laws and statutes. For to this period
belongs the episode of Ann Rutledge. The two biographers whose personal
knowledge is the best regard this as the one real romance of Lincoln's
life.
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