By previous appointment I was to cast Mr. Lincoln's
hands on the Sunday following this memorable Saturday, at nine A. M. I
found him ready, but he looked more grave and serious than he had
appeared on the previous days. I wished him to hold something in his
right hand, and he looked for a piece of pasteboard, but could find
none. I told him a round stick would do as well as anything. Thereupon
he went to the wood-shed, and I heard the saw go, and he soon returned
to the dining-room (where I did the work), whittling off the end of a
piece of broom-handle. I remarked to him that he need not whittle off
the edges.
"O, well," said he," I thought I would like to have
it nice.
When I had successfully cast the mold of the right
hand, I began the left, pausing a few moments to hear Mr. Lincoln tell
me about a scar on the thumb.
"You have heard that they call me a rail-splitter,
and you saw them carrying rails in the procession Saturday evening;
well, it is true that I did split rails, and one day, while I was
sharpening a wedge on a log, the ax glanced and nearly took my thumb
off, and there is the scar, you see.
The right hand appeared swollen as compared with the
left, on account of excessive hand-shaking the evening before; this
difference is distinctly shown in the cast.
That Sunday evening I returned to Chicago with the
molds of his hands, three photographic negatives of him, the identical
black alpaca campaign-suit of 1858, and a pair of Lynn newly-made pegged
boots. The clothes were all burned up in the great Chicago fire. The
casts of the face and hands I saved by taking them with me to Rome, and
they have crossed the sea four times.
WHITNEY, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, QUOTING
VOLK IN Century Magazine, DECEMBER, 1881.