_My Dear McClure_: I am delighted with the proof of the portrait of
Lincoln from a daguerreotype. His pictures have never quite pleased
me, and I now know why. I remember Lincoln as I saw him when I was a
boy; after he became a public man I saw him but few times. This
portrait is Lincoln as I knew him best: his sad, dreamy eye, his
pensive smile, his sad and delicate face, his pyramidal shoulders, are
the characteristics which I best remember; and I can never think of
him as wrinkled with care, so plainly shown in his later portraits.
This is the Lincoln of Springfield, Decatur, Jacksonville, and
Bloomington.
Yours cordially,