Lincoln & Herndon
YOUNG HERNDON'S STRANGE FASCINATION FOR LINCOLN
Lincoln remained in the office with Judge Logan about four years, dissolving partnership in 1845. Meanwhile he was interesting himself in behalf of young William H. Herndon, who, after Speed's removal to Kentucky, had gone to college at Jacksonville, Ill. The young man seemed to be made of the right kind of metal, was industrious, and agreeable, and Mr. Lincoln looked forward to the time when he could have "Billy" with him in a business of his own.
Mrs. Lincoln, with that marvelous instinct which women often possess, opposed her husband's taking Bill Herndon into partnership. While the young man was honest and capable enough, he was neither brilliant nor steady. He contracted the habit of drinking, the bane of Lincoln's business career. As Mr. Lincoln had not yet paid off "the national debt" largely due to his first business partner's drunkenness, it seems rather strange that he did not listen to his wife's admonitions. But young Herndon seems always to have exercised a strange fascination over his older friend and partner.
While yet in partnership with Judge Logan, Mr. Lincoln went into the national campaign of 1844, making speeches in Illinois and Indiana for Henry Clay, to whom he was thoroughly devoted.
Before this campaign Lincoln had written to Mr. Speed:
"We had a meeting of the Whigs of the county here last Monday to appoint delegates to a district convention; and Baker beat me, and got the delegation instructed to go for him. The meeting, in spite of my attempts to decline it, appointed me one of the delegates, so that in getting Baker the nomination I shall be fixed like a fellow who is made a groomsman to a fellow that has cut him out, and is marrying his own dear 'gal.'"
Mr. Lincoln, about this time, was offered the nomination for Governor of Illinois, and declined the honor. Mrs. Lincoln, who had supreme confidence in her husband's ability, tried[186] to make him more self-seeking in his political efforts. He visited his old home in Indiana, making several speeches in that part of the State. It was fourteen years after he and all the family had removed to Illinois. One of his speeches was delivered from the door of a harness shop near Gentryville, and one he made in the "Old Carter Schoolhouse." After this address he drove home with Mr. Josiah Crawford—"Old Blue Nose" for whom he had "pulled fodder" to pay an exorbitant price for Weems's "Life of Washington," and in whose house his sister and he had lived as hired girl and hired man. He delighted the old friends by asking about everybody, and being interested in the "old swimming-hole," Jones's grocery where he had often argued and "held forth," the saw-pit, the old mill, the blacksmith shop, whose owner, Mr. Baldwin, had told him some of his best stories, and where he once started in to learn the blacksmith's trade. He went around and called on all his former acquaintances who were still living in the neighborhood. His memories were so vivid and his emotions so keen that he wrote a long poem about this, from which the following are three stanzas:[187]
"My childhood's home I see again
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds the brain,
There's pleasure in it, too.
"Ah, Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise.
"And freed from all that's earthy, vile,
Seems hallowed, pure and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle,
All bathed in liquid light."
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds the brain,
There's pleasure in it, too.
"Ah, Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise.
"And freed from all that's earthy, vile,
Seems hallowed, pure and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle,
All bathed in liquid light."
TRYING TO SAVE BILLY FROM A BAD HABIT
As Mr. Lincoln spent so much of his time away from Springfield he felt that he needed a younger assistant to "keep office" and look after his cases in the different courts. He should not have made "Billy" Herndon an equal partner, but he did so, though the young man had neither the ability nor experience to earn anything like half the income of the office. If Herndon had kept sober and done his best he might have made some return for all that Mr. Lincoln, who treated him like a foster-father, was trying to do for him. But "Billy" did nothing of the] sort. He took advantage of his senior partner's absences by going on sprees with several dissipated young men about town.