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Show RARE PORTRAIT OF "HONEST ABE" Picture Believed, to Have Been Taken for Purposes of Presidential Presi-dential Campaign. IS NOW AT LEWIST0N, MAINE History of the Picture Is Fragmentary, Fragment-ary, Though It Seems Most Probable Prob-able It Wias Made at Quincy, III., in the Year 1&48. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which those who are familiar with it believe to be a very rare one, hangs upon the walls of a Lewieton law office. of-fice. At all events no one has yet been found who remembers to have seen one just like it among any of the many portraits of the martyred president pres-ident which have been published so frequently during the last few years In many of the leading magazines of the country. The picture is a lithograph, evidently evi-dently taken from a crayon drawing, and shows Mr. Lincoln as a somewhat younger man than the majority of his portraits do. Under it is a facsimile of his autograph, auto-graph, together with the words: "Republican "Re-publican Candidate for President, 1860," showing that it was evidently used as a campaign portrait during the campaign preceding his first election. elec-tion. The portrait was obtained by the late John Read, father of the present pres-ent owner of it, at Quincy, 111., during that campaign, but who took the original orig-inal from which it was made is unknown. un-known. Some years ago a book salesman who saw it claimed to know something some-thing about it, and said that it was A ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 4From an Old Print. taken soon after the convention at Which Mr. Lincoln was nominated, Ind that the original photograph was taken at tie request of Mr. Medill of Chicago, for campaign jurposes. He said further that when Mr. Lincoln went in to the photographer's to sit for the picture he had just come from the barber's, and his hair was plastered plaster-ed smoothly down upon his forehead, but that happening to catch sight of himself in a glass, Mr. Lincoln remarked re-marked that no one would know him with his hair so smooth as that, and ran his hands through It, giving it the disheveled appearance of the portrait. por-trait. He said further that In making the enlargement for the lithograph the portrait was somewhat idealized, and much of the natural ruggedness of Mr. Lincoln's features were smoothed smooth-ed out. Whether this man was correct in his belief as to the origin of the portrait, por-trait, it is undoubtedly true that it is considerably idealized, as will be seen from the copy, the portrait, while retaining re-taining the essential features which are so well known, nevertheless making mak-ing "him a far handsomer man than he is currently reported to have been. And yet Mrs. Read, who has seen him often as a young man, always said that it was an excellent likeness, like-ness, and that it looked just as Mr. Lincoln did at the time he made his speech at Quincy, in the course of the famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas Doug-las on October 13, 1858. |