Many side glimpses show
him in this light, and it seems to be the genuine and uncolored one.
In 1838 Lincoln was again elected a member of the lower house of the
legislature, and many are the amusing stories told of the canvass. It
was in this year that he made sudden onslaught on the demagogue Dick
Taylor, and opening with a sudden jerk the artful colonel's waistcoat,
displayed a glittering wealth of jewelry hidden temporarily beneath it.
There is also the tale of his friend Baker haranguing a crowd in the
store beneath Lincoln's office. The audience differed with Baker, and
was about to punish him severely for the difference, when Lincoln
dangled down through a trap-door in the ceiling, intimated his intention
to share in the fight if there was to be one, and brought the audience
to a more pacific frame of mind. Such amenities of political debate at
least tested some of the qualities of the individual. The Whig party
made him their candidate for the speakership and he came within one vote
of being elected.[44] He was again a member of the Finance Committee;
but financiering by those wise lawgivers was no longer so lightsome and
exuberant a task as it had been. The hour of reckoning had come; and the
business proved to be chiefly a series of humiliating and futile
efforts to undo the follies of the preceding two and a half years.
Lincoln shared in this disagreeable labor, as he had shared in the mania
which had made it necessary.
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