Photograph of Mr. Lincoln (1862)

Note: No photo was featured with the story published in The Polynesian)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, September 27, 1862

To say that he is ugly, is nothing; to add that his figure is grotesque, is to convey no adequate impression. Fancy a man six feet high, and thin out of proportion; with long bony arms and legs, which somehow seem to salways be in the way; with great rugged furrowed hands, which grasp you like a vice when shaping yours; with a long scraggy neck, and a chest too narrow for the great arms at its side. And to this figure a head, cocoanut shaped and somewhat too small for such a stature, covered with rough, uncombed and uncombable hair, that stands out in every direction at once; face furrowed, wrinkled and indented as though it had been scarred by vitriol; a high narrow forehead, and, sunk deep beneath bushy eyebrows, two bright, somewhat dreamy eyes, that seem to gaze through you without looking at you; a few irregular blotches of black, briskly hair, in the place where beard and whiskers ought to grow; a close-set, thin-lipped, stern mouth, with two rows of large white teeth, and a nose and ears which have been taken by mistake from a head of twice the size. Clothe this figure, then, in a long, tight, badly-fitting suit of black, creased, soiled, and pucked up at every salient point of the figure (and every point of this figure is salient) put on parge, ill-fitting boots, gloves too long for the long bony fingers, sand a fluffy hat, covered to the top with dusty, puffy crape; and then as moral, and a strange look of dignity coupled with all this grotesqueness, and you will have the impression left upon me by Abraham Lincoln. 

-MacMillan's Magazine.*

*Macmillan's Magazine was founded in 1859 by David Masson, the professor of English Literature at Edinburgh University. Masson was the journal's first editor (1859-68) and was followed by George Grove (1868-83), John Morley (1883-85) and Mowbray Morris (1885-1907). Contributors to the magazine included Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hughes, Anne Clough and F. D. Maurice.