Abraham Lincoln's Very Bad Blind Date

Courtship can be messy, even for future presidents. And while we often lament the loss of those days when youthful indiscretions were kept undocumented, the letters of the pre-technology era can offer a similarly cringeworthy window into the embarrassments of our forefathers. Case in point: Abraham Lincoln.

In 1838, the 29-year-old Illinois state representative went on a pseudo blind date set up by a "€œgreat friend" who fancied making him her brother-in-law. The date wasn't entirely blind — Lincoln had seen the sister some years before, and was keen on this set-up as he perceived her to be intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to plodding life through hand in hand with her."

But as often happens with matchmaking, things quickly went from great to uncomfortable when Mary Owens did not look as Abe had remembered her. His description is best read in its full form.

I knew she was oversize, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was called an "old maid," and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appellation, but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features —for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles — but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty five or forty years.

In other words, he was not pleased, but being the gent that he was (and yes, that's up for argument), Lincoln did the proper thing and went through with his agreement to date and potentially marry a woman he now reasoned to be one that no other man on earth would have." In doing so, he tells his friend Mrs. Orville H. Browning —the wife of a fellow member of the Legislature — that he resolved to look for Mary's positive attributes. He concluded that she had the finest face despite her weight. Plus, he writes, she was smart, which was a higher value trait.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/abraham-lincolns-very-bad-blind-date/ar-AAc7oGk