Lincoln's Love Story

[Gene C]

by Eleanor Atkinson, written in 1908 and about 60 pages.
I was looking forward to this one since I knew Mrs. Atkinson had written another Lincoln book that was fairly well received, Boyhood of Lincoln, about the same time and the same length. She is best known for a popular book she wrote called Grayfriars Bobby, a story of a dog who returns every day for years to his masters grave to mourn.

I didn't care for this book. I read the whole thing since it was short and kept hoping it would get better. Here are a few passages from p. 37-38 in the book so you can judge for yourself. It starts out pretty good.

" 1 love you very dearly!

Oh yes, she understood now! A burn-
ing blush, a gasping sigh at the shock of
flooding memory! She still struggled to
forget this blighting thing. But could
she ever again listen to such words with-
out pain or shame ? She had the courage
of a proud race. If her lips trembled, she
could at least lift her eyes to meet that
immemorial look of brooding tenderness,
and she could ask timidly if he would
hear her recite the conjugation of the
regular verb to see if she had forgotten.

Why is it that these sober old grammars,
full of hard-and-fast rules - and bewilder-
ing exceptions - strewing the path of
learning with needless thorns and obstruc-
tions of every sort, still instinctively chose
the one verb ardent youth conjugates
with no teaching at all ? First person,
singular number, present tense, declara-
tive mood - I love, transitive, requiring
an object to complete its meaning, as life
itself requires one - you. "

You know you're in trouble when your date pulls out an English Grammar book and starts talking about conjugating verbs.

I'll spare you the other samples of this book I was going to post, unless you really want me to. I know reading and writing styles have changed over the past 100 years but .

Here is the internet archive link so you can read the book, if you feel you've been bad and need to be punished
https://archive.org/stream/lincolnsloves...7/mode/2up

[RJNorton]

(06-15-2017 05:37 AM)Gene C Wrote:  You know you're in trouble when your date pulls out an English Grammar book and starts talking about conjugating verbs.

The words "Ann M. Rutledge is now learning grammer [sic]" are written on the grammar book Abraham gave Ann. It sounds like she took this effort very seriously.

[JMadonna]

Ah, Combine Lincoln with hot sex and you should have a winner.