Encounters
''nonplussed'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904120411-47-•
Some of his neighbors in New Salem were nonplussed by Lincoln’s resolute study of law. Before he began preparing himself for a career at the bar, he seemed a rather happy-go-lucky fellow. Parthena Hill told a journalist, “I don’t think Mr. Lincoln was overindustrious.… He didn’t do much. His living and his clothes cost little. He liked company, and would talk to everybody, and entertain them and himself.” Others remembered Lincoln in the period before his law studies “as a ‘shiftless’ young man, who worked at odd jobs,” and “a sort of loafer.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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''constable'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904152658-09-•
Occasionally Lincoln’s attacks backfired. At Belleville, he sought to illustrate the economic distress brought about by the Panic of 1837 and Democratic policies. As an example, he noted that just that day he had seen a fine horse sold by a constable for the unusually low price of $27. At that, the constable, who was in the audience, cried out that the horse had only one eye. The “nonplussed” Lincoln “seemed rather depressed and was less happy in his remarks than usual.” A Democrat gleefully exclaimed: “How very fortunate for the Whigs that Mr. Lincoln saw the sale of the one-eyed horse that day! He was thus enabled to prove that Mr. Van Buren caused it, together with all the other ills of life that us poor mortals ‘are heir to.’ ” At Waterloo, down in Egypt, opposition speaker Adam Snyder scolded Lincoln for his low-road tactics and warned him “that if his mission was to convert the lost and benighted, other weapons must be used.” In Salem, Lincoln reportedly “was completely done up, even his anecdotes failed to command attention.” When an ally “told him he was wasting his time,” he replied: “it is a fact, but my friends at home think I am not doing my duty unless I am out, so I may as well stay.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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''nonplussed'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904161329-05-•
One day, while nervously awaiting the arrival of reinforcements, Lincoln thought he heard cannonfire in the distance, signaling what he believed was a Confederate attack. Nonplussed by his aides’ insistence that they heard nothing, he walked over to the Arsenal, which he found unguarded, much to his surprise and dismay. All was quite still both there and along his route back to the White House. As he returned, he asked passersby if they had heard cannonading earlier. When they said that they had not, he assumed his imagination was playing tricks on him.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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