Extra Credit Questions

[David Lockmiller]

(10-06-2020 12:51 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  No googling, please.

What is the name of the person who noted the following about President Lincoln in 1862?

"There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor the uncouthness of his movement. ... He was dressed in a rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities of his figure, and had grown to be an outer skin of the man. He had shabby slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still unmixed with gray, stiff, somewhat bushy, and had apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor comb that morning, after the disarrangement of the pillow; and as to a nightcap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing of such effeminancies. His complexion is dark and sallow, betokening, I fear, an insalubrious atmosphere around the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and an impending brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his mouth are very strongly defined."

I wonder how this presently unidentified person would have described himself at the time.

The answer to that question reminds me of the following statement made by John Hay regarding President Abraham Lincoln:

"Miss Nancy Bancroft and the rest of that patent-leather glove set know no more of him than a owl does of a comet blazing into his blinking eyes."

In case the answer is Miss Nancy Bancroft, I want you to know, Roger, my Google search was for "John Hay, comet, and owl" first. I was looking for this specific John Hay quote to express my disapproval of the unknown author's assessment of President Abraham Lincoln and I knew that John Hay had expressed my sentiment the best. I then did a Google search in Google Books on "The patent leather glove set than an owl does of a comet." The first result from which I quoted was Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for ... - Page 233 by Joshua Zeitz · 2014. The second listed source in my second Google search is Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life - Volume 2 - Page 227 William Henry Herndon, ‎Jesse William Weik · 1923.

If you throw a flag on me for Googling the correct answer to your query, I am going to have to ask "for review in New York" as they say in the NFL. I was seeking an answer to the question of John Hay's story which I had vividly remembered, but could not recall the exact words. It just so happened that the answer to my question led me directly to the answer to your question (perhaps) and this was not the intention of my Google searches.

My bad. I see now at Roger's post #3662 that "he was an American." "Nancy" sounds a little too effeminate for the times. And, as Roseannadanna might have said in a similar situation: "Never mind."