He acknowledged his personal defects with a frankness unique and startling; told a girl whom he was courting that he did not believe any woman could fancy him; publicly said that he could not be in looks what was rated a gentleman; carried the knife of "the homeliest man"; disparaged himself like a Brutus or a Pope Sixtus. But the mass relished this "plain, blunt man who spoke right on." He talked himself into being the local "Eminence," but did not succeed in winning the election when first presented as "the humble" candidate for the State Senate. He stood upon his "imperfect education," his not belonging "to the first families, but the seconds"; and his shunning society as debarring him from the study he required. Repulsed at the polls, he turned to the law as another channel, supplementing forensic failings by his artful story-telling. Judges would suspend business till "that Lincoln fellow got through with his yarn-spinning" or underhandedly would direct the usher to get the rich bit Lincoln told, and repeat it at the recess. Mrs. Lincoln, the first to weigh this man justly, said proudly, that "Lincoln was the great favorite everywhere." Meanwhile his fellow citizens stupidly tired of this Merry Andrew--they "sent him elsewhere to talk other folks to death"--to the State House, where he served several terms creditably, but was mainly the fund of jollity to the lobby and the chartered jester of the lawmakers. Such loquacious witchery fitted him for the Congress. Elected to the House, he was immediately greeted by connoisseurs of the best stamp--President Martin van Buren, "prince of good fellows;" Webster, another intellect, saturnine in repose and mercurial in activity; the convivial Senator Douglas, and the like. These formed the rapt ring around Lincoln in his own chair in the snug corner of the congressional chat-room. Here he perceived that his rusticity and shallow skimmings placed him under the trained politicians. It was here, too, that his stereotyped prologue to his digressions--"That reminds me"--became popular, and even reached England, where a publisher so entitled a joke-book. Lincoln displaced "Sam Slick," and opened the way to Artemus Ward and Mark Twain. The longing for elevation was fanned by the association with the notables--Buchanan, to be his predecessor as President; Andrew Johnson, to be his vice and successor; Jefferson Davis and Alex. H. Stephens, President and Vice-President of the C. S. A.; Adams, Winthrop, Sumner, and the galaxy over whom his solitary star was to shine dazzlingly.