As Mr. Lincoln was utterly unknown in the East, the "engineers" of his
campaign for President planned to have him make himself liked by a tour
of the Middle and Northern States. To lessen the impression from one
unprepossessing in aspect, "some fixing up" was compulsory. The
journalist, Stephen Fiske, recites that on arriving at New York, Mrs.
Lincoln, a sort of valet for the trip, had hand-bag of toilet
essentials, and that she "brushed his hair, and arranged that snaky
black necktie of his--which would twist up and play the shoe-string in
five minutes after adjustment. But it was not she, as thought, who
coaxed him into making the lower part of his features become cavernous
as strong feeling surged upon him. He revealed the source of the
improvement.
"Two young ladies in Buffalo wrote me that they wanted their fathers
and sweethearts to vote for me, but I was so homely-looking that the
men refused! The ladies said that if I would only grow whiskers (what
were called "weepers," or the Lord Dundreary mode, was popular) it
would improve my appearance, and I would get four more votes! I grew
the whiskers!"
(In the Lincoln iconology, his pictures before and after the whiskers
is a distinction.)
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