Page:Samuel Scoville -Abraham Lincoln, His Story.djvu/33

 legislature and went to Springfield to live. He reached that town on a borrowed horse, with all of his possessions in a couple of saddle-bags, and accepted the offer of Joshua Speed, a storekeeper, to share his room and bed until he got a start. Going upstairs Lincoln set his saddlebags on the floor and coming down said beamingly, "Well, Speed, I'm moved."

In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd, a spirited, pretty Kentucky girl. They lived at the Globe Tavern at four dollars a week. He wrote to a friend who had invited him to visit in Kentucky: "I am so poor, and make so little headway, that I drop back in a month of idleness as much as I would gain in a year's sowing."

Here is Lincoln's own account of his appearance at this time: "I am in height six feet four inches nearly, lean in flesh, weighing on an average of a hundred and eighty pounds, dark complexion, with coarse, black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected."

He always had unusual strength and endurance. Once he picked up and carried a weight of six hundred pounds. At another time he shouldered some posts which several men were vainly trying to lift with a hoisting machine. In harness he was able to lift a dead weight of half a ton off the ground. Moreover,