h they confidently committed his fame. Blind Tom, the negro mimic,
having once heard him speak, was wont for many years to entertain
curious audiences by reproducing those swelling tones in which he rolled
out his defense of popular sovereignty, and it is not improbable that
Douglas owes to the marvelous imitator of sounds a considerable part of
such fame as he has among uneducated men in our time. Among historical
students, however seriously his deserts are questioned, there is no
question of the importance of his career.

He was born April 23, 1813, at Brandon, Vermont, the son of Stephen
Arnold Douglas and Sarah Fisk, his wife. His father, a successful
physician, was doubtless of Scotch descent; but the founder of the
Douglas family in America was married in Northamptonshire. He landed on
Cape Ann in 1639-40, but in 1660 he made his home at New London,
Connecticut. Dr. Douglas's mother was an Arnold of Rhode Island,
descended from that Governor Arnold who was associated with Roger
Williams in the founding of the colony. Sarah Fisk's mother was also an
Arnold, and of the same family. Their son was therefore of good New
England stock, and amply entitled to his middle name. Dr. Douglas died
suddenly of apoplexy in July, 1813; it is said that he held the infant
Stephen in his arms when he was stricken. His widow made her home with a
bachelor brother on a farm near Brandon, and the boy's early years were
passed in an environment familiar to readers of American biography--the
simplicity, the poverty, the industry, and the serious-mindedness of
rural New England. He was delicate, with a little bit of a body and a
very large head, but quick-witted and precocious, and until he was
fifteen years of age his elders permitted him to look forward to a
collegiate education and a professional career.

But by that time the uncle was married, and an heir was born to him.
Stephen was therefore made to understand that the expense of his
education could be met only from his mother's limited means. He promptly
resolved to learn a trade, walked fourteen miles to the neighboring town
of Middlebury, and apprenticed himself to a cabinet-maker. He worked at
cabinet-making two years, and afterwards, even when he had risen so high
that many of his countrymen were willing he should try his hand at
making cabinets of men, he protested that those two years were by far
the happiest of his life, and that he would never willingly have
exchanged his p