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face that unforgetable expression so difficult to analyse, which belonged to his very soul. They were the eyes of a seer, of a man who was not to be deceived by the passing show, because he beheld the powers and principles that move behind it, and they were the eyes of a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. For the rest, his jaw was long and square, and his chin very firm, his forehead ran back and was somewhat narrow but high, his cheeks were thin and creased over their prominent cheek-bones, with a noticeable mole above the right-hand corner of the mouth near the base of one of the strongly marked furrows, and the whole face was bronzed and its surface scarred in all directions as though eaten "by vitriol."

The upper lip was always clean shaven. The beard and whiskers being newly grown were at this time very patchy and irregular; while he had many a joke against his ungovernable head of hair. It had a way of getting up as far as possible in the world," he said; and he used to tell with relish how, after his nomination, he heard a boy shouting his portrait through the streets, adding, "will look better when he has had his hair combed."

Yet even on such public occasions, when Lincoln was least at home with himself, the visitor could not be blind to the moral strength, and inherent spiritual dignity of the man who presented so awkward a figure. When he smiled, his whole face became suffused with the attractive beauty of his inner nature; in many little ways he revealed even to strangers that sympathetic kindness of heart which is the true good-breeding; and when he told a story there came a gleam and sparkle of humour into his eyes, as he rubbed his

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hand down his long thigh, and chuckled over his own fun.

When he was engrossed in serious conversation, he forgot all that nervous ungainliness of which we have heard so much. His attitude became instead, one of unstudied dignity without any hint of self-consciousness. The same loss of awkwardness was noticeable after the first few sentences of his public utterances. In the act

of expressing his convictions he sloughed off everything in his appearance which detracted from his manhood and mastery, and revealed himself as worthy of the truths he uttered and the great office entrusted to him.1 1 See Appendix D.

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