Encounters
''imbroglio'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904120411-49-•
The Illinois House of Representatives that Lincoln entered was a rudimentary body. Most of his colleagues were farmers, many of them unsophisticated. Representative Alfred W. Cavarly pronounced the word “unique*”* “you-ni-kue”; when someone asked for a definition, one wag quipped that it was the “female of the unicorn.” (A Springfield lobbyist remarked on Cavarly’s “very inordinate enlargement of the organ of self-esteem. This is shown in the pomposity of his delivery and the elevation of his ideas, which are sometimes so ‘dape and so profound,’ as Paddy O’Flanagan said of the preacher, ‘that the divil a word can you untherstand.’ ”) Representative Jesse K. Dubois said “imbroligo” instead of “imbroglio,” and, as a synonym for it created the neologism “embrigglement.” In 1840, David Davis observed, perhaps generously, that the “politicians of the State, of both parties, are of a medium order of intellect.” After serving in the General Assembly, Davis commented at the close of one session, “I do not think that the legislature has done much harm. We never inquire, whether it has ever done any good.” In 1847, he flatly denounced the General Assembly as “the great source of evil in this State. If there had been none in session for 10 yrs. Ill[inoi]s w[oul]d have been a very prosperous state.” An observer of the 1840–1841 House of Representatives said that it “appeared to be composed all of young Men, some of them mere Boys; they forcibly reminded me of a Debating School of Boy Students.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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