Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/85

Rh by means of the secret processes of the cabbala, and saw their future husbands, wives, or destinies in the kaleidoscopic groupings of the tea-grounds in their cups. An accident, which to the unimaginative mind was obviously attributable to improvidence, they assigned to the genius of bad luck. A matrimonial match, propitious in its consequences, was made by the angels in the Elysium of light; one unfortunate in its dénouement was churned up by a dusky crowd in the other place, etc.

The prevalence of these foolish notions exercised a great influence on the plastic and susceptible mind of our hero, in the formative stage of his career. His vigor of mind and independence of thought in all other phases and manifestations could not triumph over these mental weaknesses. When his son Robert was bitten by a dog which it was feared was rabid, he journeyed with him, at great discomfort, to Terre Haute, to have a madstone which was there applied to the wound. While in the White House, he was known to steal out furtively and attend spiritualistic séances, and consult mediums as to his lines of duty, and to the prognostications of the future. He believed in dreams, as Napoleon did; he had faith in destiny. His whole manhood's life was one scene of misery because it was largely filled with dismal and shadowy forebodings.

Among these people, he grew to maturity of manhood, and while there imbibed and matured an ambition which brought forth fruit after many days. He lived there from the fall of 1816, when he was seven and a half years old, until the spring of 1830, when he was of age—a physical, political; and conventional man. Almost naked, he