The Soul of Ann Rutledge

Abraham Lincoln's Romance

9781465646835

301 pages

Library of Alexandria

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Overview

Ann! Ann! Ann Rutledge! Hallo! Hallo! The cheerful voice belonged to a rosy-cheeked girl who shouted in front of Rutledge Inn, one of the straggling group of log houses that made the village of New Salem, Illinois, in 1831. Pausing in front of the Inn, the animated girl repeated her call lustily as she watched for the closed door to open. "Hallo yourself, Nance Cameron," a clear, musical voice replied from somewhere in the rear of the weather-stained building, and the next moment Ann Rutledge came around the corner. "Look! Springtime has come! Isn't it splendid to be alive in the springtime? I found them in the thicket!" and pausing she held out an armful of plum branches white with their first bloom. In the moment she stood, an artist might have caught an inspiration. On one side of the background was a vista of open garden, perhaps, and meadow, with a glimpse of forest farther back, and over it all the white-flecked, spring-blue sky. On the other side was the solid framework that told of days when there had been no meadow or garden, and of the pioneer labor that had wrought the change. In the foreground of this brown and green and blue setting stood a slender girl in a pink-sprigged calico dress. Her violet eyes were shaded with dark lashes. Her shapely head was crowned with a wealth of golden hair in which a glint of red seemed hiding. A white kerchief was pinned low about her neck, and across her breast were tied the white strings of a ruffled bonnet which dropped on her shoulders behind. She pressed her face for a moment in the armful of blossoms, sniffing deep, and with the joy of youth exclaimed again, "Isn't it splendid to be alive in the springtime!"