ssing. Such he appeared as he
rode in the procession on the forenoon of that warm summer day. His
appearance was not different in the afternoon of that day, when, in the
public square, he first stood before the great multitude who had
assembled there to hear him. His powers were aroused gradually as he
went on with his speech. There was much play of humor. 'Judge Douglas
has,' he said, 'one great advantage of me in this contest. When he
stands before his admiring friends, who gather in great numbers to hear
him, they can easily see, with half an eye, all kinds of _fat offices_
sprouting out of his fat and jocund face, and, indeed, from every part
of his plump and well-rounded body. His appearance is therefore
irresistibly attractive. His friends expect him to be President, and
they expect their reward. But when I stand before the people, not the
sharpest vision is able to detect in my lean and lank person, or in my
sunken and hollow cheeks, _the faintest sign or promise_ of an office. I
am not a candidate for the Presidency, and hence there is no beauty in
me that men should desire me.' The crowd was convulsed with laughter at
this sally. As the speech went on, the speaker, though often impressing
his points with apposite and laughter-provoking stories, grew more and
more earnest. He showed that the government was founded in the interest
of freedom, not slavery. He traced the steady aggressions of the slave
power step by step, until he came to declare and to dwell upon the fact
of the irrepressible conflict between the two. Then, as he went on to
show, with wonderful eloquence of speech and of manner, that the country
must and would ultimately become, not all slave, but all free, he was
transfigured before his audience. His homely countenance fairly glowed
with the splendor of his prophetic speech; and his body, no longer
awkward and ungainly, but mastered and swayed by his thought, became an
obedient and graceful instrument of eloquent expression. The whole man
seemed to speak. He seemed like some grand Hebrew prophet, whose face
was glorified by the bright visions of a better day which he saw and
declared. His eloquence was not merely that of clear and luminous
statement, felicitous illustration, or excited yet restrained feeling;
it was the eloquence also of _thought_. With something of the
imaginative, he united rare dialectic power. He felt the truth before he
expounded it; but when once it was felt by him, then his