rising from imperfect surveys,
pre-emption rights, and conflicting claims.[73] Daily contact with the
practical aspects of the public land policy of the country, seems to
have opened his eyes to the significance of the public domain as a
national asset. With all his realism, Douglas was gifted with a
certain sort of imagination in things political. He not only saw what
was obvious to the dullest clerk,--the revenue derived from land
sales,--but also those intangible and prospective gains which would
accrue to State and nation from the occupation and cultivation of the
national domain. He came to believe that, even if not a penny came
into the treasury, the government would still be richer from having
parcelled out the great uninhabited wastes in the West. Beneath the
soiled and uncomely exterior of the Western pioneer, native or
foreigner, Douglas discerned not only a future tax-bearer, but the
founder of Commonwealths.

Only isolated bits of tradition throw light upon the daily life of the
young Register of the Land Office. All point to the fact that politics
was his absorbing interest. He had no avocations; he had no private
life, no esoteric tastes which invite a prying curiosity; he had no
subtle aspects of character and temperament which sometimes make even
commonplace lives dramatic. His life was lived in the open. Lodging at
the American Tavern, he was always seen in company with other men.
Diller's drug-store, near the old market, was a familiar rendezvous
for him and his boon companions. Just as he had no strong interests
which were not political, so his intimates were likely to be his
political confreres. He had no literary tastes: if he read at all, he
read law or politics.[74] Yet while these characteristics suggest
narrowness, they were perhaps the inevitable outcome of a society
possessing few cultural resources and refinements, but tremendous
directness of purpose.

One of the haunts of Douglas in these Springfield days was the office
of the _Republican_, a Democratic journal then edited by the Webers.
There he picked up items of political gossip and chatted with the
chance comer, or with habitues like himself. He was a welcome visitor,
just the man whom a country editor, mauling over hackneyed matter,
likes to have stimulate his flagging wits with a jest or a racy
anecdote. Now and then Douglas would take up a pen good-naturedly, and
scratch off an editorial which would set Springfield politicians by