Sundays the neighbors would see Mary go off to church in Springfield and Lincoln pull a little wagon with the baby in it up and down the street. He always held an open book in one hand and read absorbedly as he walked. One Sunday, however, the baby fell out of the wagon and when Mrs. Lincoln returned from church she found the little fellow bawling and squalling on the ground while Lincoln went on with his reading. She gave a loud shriek and then, when Lincoln saw what had happened and picked up the baby, the two of them began laughing.
Sometimes, though, Mrs. Lincoln chided her husband for his absent-mindedness. “He is of no account when he is at home,” she once sighed; “he never does nothing except to warm himself and read. He never went to market in his life; I have to look after that. He just does nothing. He is the most useless, good-for-nothing man on earth.” But she added that if anyone else ever said that about him she would scratch the person’s eyes out.
Once, when she was criticizing Lincoln for his carelessness, a relative remonstrated, “If I had a husband with a mind such as yours,” she said, “I wouldn’t care what he did.” Mary was pleased by the compliment to her husband. “It is very foolish of me,” she agreed; “the things of which I complain are really very small.”
Source:
Boller, Paul F. "Mary Todd Lincoln." Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 120. Print.
Original source(s) Listed:
Helm, “Mary Todd Lincoln,” 479.
Goltz, Incidents, 6.
Further Reading:
Imagining the Lincolns laughing over a dropped baby is priceless!