By degrees one comes to
understand how it was possible for contemporaries to hold
contradictory views of him and for each to believe frantically
that his views were proved by facts. For anyone who thinks he
can hit off in a few neat generalities this complex,
extraordinary personality, a single warning may suffice. Walt
Whitman, who was perhaps the most original thinker and the most
acute observer who ever saw Lincoln face to face has left us his
impression; but he adds that there was something in Lincoln's
face which defied description and which no picture had caught.
After Whitman's conclusion that "One of the great portrait
painters of two or three hundred years ago is needed," the mere
historian should proceed with caution.
There is historic significance in his very appearance. His huge,
loose-knit figure, six feet four inches high, lean, muscular,
ungainly, the evidence of his great physical strength, was a fit
symbol of those hard workers, the children of the soil, from whom
he sprang. His face was rugged like his figure, the complexion
swarthy, cheek bones high, and bushy black hair crowning a great
forehead beneath which the eyes were deep-set, gray, and
dreaming. A sort of shambling powerfulness formed the main
suggestion of face and figure, softened strangely by the
mysterious expression of the eyes, and by the singular delicacy
of the skin.
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