Fields afterward published Hawthorne’s monograph on President Lincoln, and, although it is rather an unsympathetic statement of the man, it remains the only authentic pen-and-ink sketch that we have of him. Most important is his recognition of Lincoln as “essentially a Yankee” in appearance and character; for it has only recently been discovered that Lincoln was descended from an old New England family, and that his ancestors first emigrated to Virginia and afterward to Kentucky. [Footnote: Essay on Lincoln in “True Republicanism.”] Hawthorne says of him: “If put to guess his calling and livelihood, I should have taken him for a country schoolmaster as soon as anything else. [Footnote: The country school-master of that time.--Ed.] He was dressed in a rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities of his figure, and had grown to be the outer skin of the man. He had shabby slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still unmixed with gray, stiff, somewhat bushy, and had apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor comb that morning, after the disarrangement of the pillow; and as to a nightcap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing of such effeminacies. His complexion is dark and sallow, betokening, I fear, an insalubrious atmosphere around the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and impending brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his mouth are very strongly denned. “The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet anywhere in the length and breadth of the States; but, withal, it is redeemed, illuminated, softened, and brightened by a kindly though serious look out of his eyes, and an expression of homely sagacity, that seems weighted with rich results of village experience. A great deal of native sense; no bookish cultivation, no refinement; honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, sly,--at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft.... But on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to put in his place.” [Footnote: “Yesterdays with Authors,” 99.] This is not a flattered portrait, like those by Lincoln’s political biographers; neither is it an idealized likeness, such as we may imagine him delivering his Gettysburg Address. It is rather an external description of the man, but it is, after all, Lincoln as he appeared in the White House to the innumerable visitors, who, as sovereign American citizens, believed they had a right to an interview with the people’s distinguished servant.