Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden) - "Ester Ried"

Clive Bell - "Since Cezanne"

Robert W. Chambers - "The Common Law"

Richard Barnum - "Mappo, the Merry Monkey"

Donald Finkel, 79, Poet of Free-Ranging Styles, Is Dead
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Book Review: The Dream by Gurbaksh Chahal
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Book Review: The Dream by Gurbaksh Chahal
Donald Finkel, a noted American poet whose work teemed with curious juxtapositions, which in their unorthodoxy helped illuminate the function of poetry itself, died on Nov. 15 at his home in St. Louis. He was 79. The cause was complications of Alzheimers

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McClure\'s Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 written by Various

V >> Various >> McClure\'s Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2




The picture, however, which will attract the greatest interest
is the frontispiece, from a daguerreotype which his son,
Robert Lincoln, thinks was taken when his father was
about forty years old. In this picture, which bears little
resemblance to any other known portraits, he is dressed with
scrupulous care. His hair is combed and brushed down with
something like youthful vanity, and he has a smooth, bright,
rather handsome face, and without sunken cheeks, strikingly
resembling in contour and the shape of the head some of the
early portraits of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It looks, however, as
if it had been taken at an earlier age than forty. As the only
portrait of Lincoln with a comparatively young face it will
be treasured by all his admirers, and his son has conferred
a distinct benefit by his courtesy in allowing it to be
reproduced.

There are numerous other portraits, among them those of the
Rev. Jesse Head, who married Lincoln's father and mother; of
Austin Gollaher, who was a boy friend of Lincoln in Kentucky,
and the only one now living; of his step-mother, Sarah Bush
Lincoln; of Josiah Crawford, whom Lincoln served in Indiana
as "hired boy;" of the well-known Dennis Hanks, cousin of
Lincoln's mother; of John Hanks, also a cousin; of Judge John
Pitcher, who assisted Lincoln in his earliest studies; and of
Joseph Gentry, the only boy associate of Lincoln in Indiana
now living. These portraits, in addition to the numerous views
of scenes connected with Lincoln's boyhood, add greatly to
the interest of the text. Mr. McClure, the proprietor of the
magazine, is certainly to be congratulated upon the successful
manner in which he has launched the opening chapters of the
new "Life of Lincoln." The remaining ones, running a whole
year, will be awaited with keen interest. It is said that
Miss Tarbell has found and obtained a shorthand report of his
unpublished but famous speech delivered at Bloomington, May
29, 1856, before the first Republican State convention ever
held in Illinois. This is a great find and a very important
addition to his published speeches. Many of those who heard
it have always claimed that it was the most eloquent speech he
ever made.

In an editorial in the "Standard-Union" of Brooklyn, Mr. Murat
Halstead expresses the general feeling of all who knew Lincoln:

The magazine gives an admirable engraving of this portrait
as the frontispiece, as "The earliest portrait of Abraham
Lincoln, from a daguerreotype taken when Lincoln was about
forty; owned by his son, the Hon. Robert T. Lincoln, through
whose courtesy it is here reproduced for the first time."
This is a very modest statement, considering the priceless
discovery it announces. The portrait does not show a man
"about forty" years old in appearance. "About" thirty would be
the general verdict, if it were not that the daguerreotype
was unknown when Lincoln was of that age. It does not seem,
however, that he could have been more than thirty-five, and
for that age the youthfulness of the portrait is wonderful.
This is a new Lincoln, and far more attractive, in a sense,
than anything the public has possessed. This is the portrait
of a remarkably handsome man.... The head is magnificent,
the eyes deep and generous, the mouth sensitive, the whole
expression something delicate, tender, pathetic, poetic. This
was the young man with whom the phantoms of romance dallied,
the young man who recited poems and was fanciful and
speculative, and in love and despair, but upon whose brow
there already gleamed the illumination of intellect, the
inspiration of patriotism. There were vast possibilities in
this young man's face. He could have gone anywhere and done
anything. He might have been a military chieftain, a novelist,
a poet, a philosopher, ah! a hero, a martyr--and, yes, this
young man might have been--he even was Abraham Lincoln! This
was he with the world before him. It is good fortune to have
the magical revelation of the youth of the man the world
venerates. This look into his eyes, into his soul--not before
he knew sorrow, but long before the world knew him--and to
feel that it is worthy to be what it is, and that we are
better acquainted with him and love him the more, is something
beyond price.

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1863.

From a photograph by Brady, taken in Washington.]

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1854--HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.

From a photograph owned by Mr. George Schneider of Chicago,
Illinois, former editor of the "Staats Zeitung," the most influential
anti-slavery German newspaper of the West. Mr. Schneider first met Mr.
Lincoln in 1853, in Springfield. "He was already a man necessary to
know," says Mr. Schneider. In 1854 Mr. Lincoln was in Chicago, and
Mr. Isaac N. Arnold, a prominent lawyer and politician of Illinois,
invited Mr. Schneider to dine with Mr. Lincoln. After dinner, as
the gentlemen were going down town, they stopped at an itinerant
photograph gallery, and Mr. Lincoln had the above picture taken for
Mr. Schneider. The newspaper he holds in his hands is the "Press and
Tribune." The picture has never before been reproduced.]

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN FEBRUARY, 1860, AT THE TIME OF THE COOPER
INSTITUTE SPEECH.

From a photograph by Brady. The debate with Douglas in 1858 had given
Lincoln a national reputation, and the following year he received many
invitations to lecture. One came from a young men's Republican club in
New York,--for one in a series of lectures designed for an audience of
men and women of the class apt to neglect ordinary political meetings.
Lincoln consented, and in February, 1860 (about three months before
his nomination for the Presidency), delivered what is known from the
hall in which it was delivered, as the "Cooper Institute speech"--a
speech which more than confirmed his reputation. While in New York he
was taken by the committee of entertainment to Brady's gallery, and
sat for the portrait reproduced above. It was a frequent remark with
Lincoln that this portrait and the Cooper Institute speech made him
President.]