nes,
the eyes appear as if seeing something beyond the vision of other men,
and the shoulders stoop, as though they too were bearing a weight. But
in a moment all would be changed. The deep eyes could flash, or twinkle
merrily with humor, or look out from under overhanging brows as they
did upon the Five Points children in kindliest gentleness. In public
speaking, his tall body rose to its full height, his head was thrown
back, his face seemed transfigured with the fire and earnestness of his
thought, and his voice took on a high clear tenor tone that carried his
words and ideas far out over the listening crowds. At such moments, when
answering Douglas in the heat of their joint-debate, or later, during
the years of war, when he pronounced with noble gravity the words of his
famous addresses, not one in the throngs that heard him could say with
truth that he was other than a handsome man.

It has been the fashion, too, to say that he was slovenly, and careless
in his dress. This also is a mistake. His clothes could not fit smoothly
on his gaunt and bony frame. He was no tailor's figure of a man; but
from the first he clothed himself as well as his means allowed, and in
the fashion of the time and place. In reading the grotesque stories of
his boyhood, of the tall stripling whose trousers left exposed a length
of shin, it must be remembered not only how poor he was, but that he
lived on the frontier, where other boys, less poor, were scarcely
better clad. In Vandalia, the blue jeans he wore was the dress of his
companions as well, and later, from Springfield days on, clear through
his presidency, his costume was the usual suit of black broadcloth,
carefully made, and scrupulously neat. He cared nothing for style. It
did not matter to him whether the man with whom he talked wore a coat of
the latest cut, or owned no coat at all. It was the man inside the coat
that interested him.

In the same way he cared little for the pleasures of the table. He ate
most sparingly. He was thankful that food was good and wholesome and
enough for daily needs, but he could no more enter into the mood of the
epicure for whose palate it is a matter of importance whether he eats
roast goose or golden pheasant, than he could have counted the grains of
sand under the sea.

In the summers, while he was President, he spent the nights at a cottage
at the Soldiers' Home, a short distance north of Washington, riding or
driving out through the gath