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man of ordinary height. Long limbs and large and strong features were fitted to this unusual stature, and harmonized perfectly with it; there was no effect of disproportion or grotesqueness.

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Sculptors and critics are agreed in characterizing Lincoln's hands as marvelously shapely and beautiful. Borglum says: "His hands were not disproportionately large. In his early life hard labor had developed the palms of his hands, and the thick muscle part of his thumb was full and strong; but this shrank later to the thumb of a literary man."

Bartlett says: "The photograph of Lincoln and Little Tad shows the President's great style of hand and its splendid articulation with the wrist. A hand fit not only for the first and greatest American, but in every way worthy to write, as he did, literature that is nothing less than biblical in its majestic simplicity.'

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Bernard says: "Next to the face, as an index of Lincoln's character, came his hands. The fingers are long and tapering, and the lines that divide them are almost straight and parallel. The hands suggest sensitiveness, silence and repose."

His shoulders were broad and his chest massive, like those of his muscular father. His arms and legs were longer than were Thomas Lincoln's, for he was of much greater height. All sculptors who have made a careful study of Mr. Lincoln's physical form are united in the declaration that he was of very rare and symmetrical construction. Very tall men are usually clumsy and awkward in movement, but it was quite otherwise with Mr. Lincoln. Bartlett quotes approvingly the following from Nicolay: "There was neither oddity, eccentricity, awkwardness nor grotesqueness in his face, figure or movement. On the contrary he was prepossessing in appearance when the entire man was fairly considered, mentally and physically, his unusual height and proportion, and the general movement of body and mind. His walk was vigorous, elastic,

The Century, Vol. 20, p. 932.

10 Portraits of Lincoln, p. 33.

easy, rather quick, firm and dignified; no shuffling or hesitancy."

Hon. H. C. Deming describes "his posture and carriage" as being "with the grace of unstudied and careless ease rather than of cultivated airs and highbred pretensions." My own recollections are that seated or standing he had an artless and unconscious dignity of which there could be no counterfeit or imitation, and every movement however slight or considerable was gracefully pleasing and impressive.

There have been published some very careless and misleading statements concerning Mr. Lincoln's habits of dress.

Hon. Joseph H. Choate, the distinguished lawyer, statesman and diplomat, was a young man when Lincoln delivered the Cooper Institute address and in his personal reminiscences of that event in describing Lincoln's appearance he says: "His great stature signalled him out from the crowd. His clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame."

One of the members of the Young Men's Central Republican Union, under whose auspices that address was delivered, in a recently published account of that affair writes: "His dress that night before a New York audience was the most unbecoming that a fiend's ingenuity could have devised for a tall, gaunt man-a black frock coat, ill setting and short for him in the body, skirt and arms-a rolling collar low down, disclosing his long, thin, shrivelled throat, uncovered and exposed."

These two descriptions of Mr. Lincoln's attire at the time of that most important event in his pre-presidential life are fairly representative of similar statements which have been published in periodicals and books. No such severe characterization of Mr. Lincoln's dress upon that momentous occasion was published at the time of the event, nor until after it had become the prevailing custom for writers to exercise their best gifts upon efforts to disparage Mr. Lincoln's personal appearance. Some writers seem to think that a true and faithful 11 Portraits of Lincoln, p. 12.

picture of the inner Lincoln, and his achievements, must have for a background a shocking caricature of the outer Lincoln. Hence, his dress has been made the subject of most unfortunate misrepresentations of which the foregoing are fair samples.

It is not at all probable that Mr. Lincoln was to any degree carelessly or unbecomingly dressed at the time he made the Cooper Institute speech. He realized fully that it was an occasion of very great importance to his own political preferment. His ambition at that time was to be chosen as VicePresident at the next national election. He was aware that those who were seeking the nomination of Seward as the republican candidate for President were planning to have him selected for the second place. That was the extent of his aspirations while preparing for the Cooper Institute speech, although his friends in Illinois were vigorously conducting a campaign to place his name at the head of the ticket. In either event this engagement to speak in New York City was a golden opportunity if he could measure up to its requirements. So keen was his realization of all this that on Sunday afternoon he broke an engagement to dine at the home of Henry C. Bowen that his thoughts might not be diverted by social amenities from the address he had to deliver the next evening. He was oppressed by his realization of the requirements of the opportunity to address such an audience, and that he might appear to good advantage he was clad in an expensive new suit made expressly for that occasion. He was not without experience, being just past fifty-one years of age and having been prominently before the public for many years. It is, therefore, not in the least probable that there was any lack of comeliness in his attire apart from the unavoidable difficulty of fitting an outer garment to a form of such unusual measurements. That his garments did not fit as closely as did those upon the rotund figures of Bryant and Field is possible, but that they were less becoming than others is not probable.

Fortunately, however, we are not left to probability respecting his appearance upon that platform. During the after

noon of that 27th of February, 1860, Mr. Lincoln, clad in the suit he wore while delivering the Cooper Institute address stood before the camera for a full length photograph by Brady. The attention of the reader is most earnestly invited to that picture with its dignified, impressive pose, compact, sinewy neck, gracefully curved collar and well-fitting, becoming coat and vest, silently protesting against all representations of Lincoln's attire upon that occasion as lacking in any particular.

This one picture of Lincoln as he appeared on the day of that address should be sufficient to silence, forever, all claims that he was careless in his attire. The picture being a photograph taken from life cannot be untruthful and bears witness to the scrupulous care with which Mr. Lincoln prepared for his appearance before the public. But before the public. But it would perhaps be well for the reader to consult other Lincoln photographs and note the uniform fit of coat and vest to the neck and chest, and the graceful folds and lines of every garment worn. Each one will be found to confirm the statement of Dr. F. Fuller that "a peculiar air of neatness and refinement so difficult to describe, yet so attractive, always pervaded him."12

The following in the Nicolay Century Magazine article has peculiar weight in this connection: "There were many flippant and ill-natured remarks concerning Mr. Lincoln's dress, giving people the idea that he was either very rude by nature, or given to hopeless eccentricities. Nothing could be more untrue. He suffered no wise in comparison as to personal appearance with Douglas, the senator, or Bryant, the poet, or Edward Everett, the polished statesman, diplomat and orator.

"In the fifteen hundred days during which he occupied the White House, receiving daily visits at almost all hours, often from seven in the morning to midnight, from all classes and conditions of American citizens, as well as from many distinguished foreigners, there was never any eccentric or habitual incongruity of his garb with his station. The world has yet to learn that General Scott, or Lord Lyons, or Bishop 12 Lincoln Scrap-book, p. 3.

[graphic]

LINCOLN AT COOPER INSTITUTE

From a photograph by Brady, New York, February 29, 1860, showing Lincoln's attire when he delivered his Cooper Institute address.

By courtesy of Mr. F. H. Meserve, New York City

(See page 54)

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