OLD ABE WILL LOOK BETTER WHEN HIS HAIR IS COMBED.
"Did I ever tell you the joke the Chicago newsboys had on me? (To the War Department telegraph manager, A. B. Chandler.) A short time before my nomination (for President), I was at Chicago attending to a lawsuit. A photographer asked me to sit for a picture, and I did so. This coarse, rough hair of mine was in particularly bad tousle at the time, and the picture presented me in all its fright. After my nomination, this being about the only picture of me there was, copies were struck off to show those who had never seen me how I looked. The newsboys carried them around to sell, and had for their cry:
"'Here's your "Old Abe"--he will look better when he gets his hair combed!'"
He laughed heartily, says Mr. Chandler.
NOTE.--Mrs. Lincoln seems to have perceived this bar to her husband's facial beauty. For the journalist, Fiske, relating the arrival of the Lincolns in New York for the Eastern tour in 1860, speaks thus of the toilet to befit him for the reception by Mayor Fernando Wood:
"The train stopped, and Mrs. Lincoln opened her handbag, and said:
"'Abraham, I must fix you up a bit for these city folks.'
"Mr. Lincoln gently lifted her upon the seat before him. (She was an undersized, stout woman.) She parted, combed, and brushed his hair.
"'Do I look nice, now, mother?' he affectionately asked.
"'Well, you'll do, Abraham,' replied Mrs. Lincoln critically."