Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1878 — The Last Picture of Lincoln. [ARTICLE]

The Last Picture of Lincoln.

Mr. Noah Brooks, an intimate friend of Lincoln, writes as follows in the “ Midwinter” Scribner about the .last photograph of the President, a drawing of which by Wyatt Eaton has been engraved by Cole as a frontispiece to the same number of the magazine : One Saturday night, the President asked me if I had any objection to accompany him to a photographer’s on Sunday. He said that it was impossible for him to go on any other day, and he would like to have me see him “set.” Next day, we went together, and as he was leaving the house he stopped and said, “ Hold on, I have forgotten Everett!” Stepping hastily back, he brought with him a folded paper, which he explained was a printed copy ©f the oration that Mr. Everett was to deliver, in a few days, at Gettysburg. It occupied nearly the whole of two pages of the Boston Journal, and looked very formidable indeed. As we walked away from the house, Lincoln said, “It was very kind in Mr. Everett to send me thia. I sup- > pose he was afraid I should say something that he wanted to say. He needn’t have been alarmed. My speech isn’t long.” “So it is written, is it, then?” I asked. “Well, no,” was the reply. “It is not exactly written. It is not finished, anyway. I have written it over, two or three times, and I shall have to give it another lick before lam satisfied. But it is short, short, short.” I found, afterward, that the Gettysburg speech was actually written, and rewritten a great many times. The several drafts and interlineations of that famous address, if in existence, would be an invaluable memento of its great author. Lincoln took the copy of Everett’s oration with him to the photographer’s, thinking that he might have time to look it over while waiting for the operator. But he chatted so constantly, and asked so many questions about the art of photography, that he scarcely opened it. The folded paper is seen lying on the table, near the President, in the picture which was made that day. So far as I know, this was the last time Lincoln ever sat for his photograph. Unfortunately, the negative plate was broken after a few impressions had been printed from it, and, though Lincoln promised to give -the photographer another sitting, he never found time. The illustration which forms the frontispiece of this magazine is the first engraving which has ever been made from the sun-picture. Mr. Wyatt Eaton has reproduced with great fidelity and with loving conscientiousness the sentiment and the details of this admirable likehess.