There's that funny letter Lincoln wrote, to Speed's mom, about a woman he'd thought about asking to marry, about how coming back to her after being away he wasn't so sure, of how she didn't want to marry him anyway. It's an admission of something with a potential for no small embarrassment, and magnanimously, with humor, he embraced, owned, as we say now, the story. And yes, it really happened, the whole thing. (Lincoln did things live, not holding back, not afraid terribly of screwing up, no small amount of his beauty. Eventually like a living Keats poem.)

It's one of those rare but beautiful moments in American literature where one looks at himself and sees human failings, observes how those play out, and how one lives on, hopeful of being a decent person.