as better prepared for it than I was the
year before. My house with its walls a foot thick of solid oak and
tightly plastered against the penetrating winds kept out the cold. And
my fireplaces built under my very eye threw a steady heat into the
rooms. I was giving parties from time to time and attending them as
well. Douglas always came. He was unfailingly the life of the party. He
had reenforced his political successes with a genuine hold upon the
hearts of the young people and the older people. He was attacked weekly
by the Whig newspaper. But he was not without defense. Almost upon
arriving at Jacksonville he had written a letter of praise to the editor
of a newly started journal. The editor was greatly pleased at this
spontaneous expression of interest and had become Douglas' friend and
stanch champion. Ah! Douglas was only manipulating. He had written this
letter to win a newspaper to his support. The wily schemer! "Genius has
come into our midst," wrote the editor. "No one can doubt this who heard
Mr. Douglas expound Democratic doctrine in his wonderful debate with
John Wyatt. This country is richer for having attracted Douglas to it.
He is here to stay. And he will be one of the great men of the country
as President Jackson is now the greatest figure since Washington; and
Illinois will send him forth as her son to speak and to act on the great
questions that are already beginning to fill the minds of the people."

Douglas often came out to stay for the night or for a day or two. He had
little law business, but his energies were always employed in shaping
his powers toward a participation in the politics of the country. His
superhuman energy was intensified by the fact that he had been deprived
of an opportunity to educate himself. It was the gadfly that drove him
forward with such restless industry. I could see that he had no patience
for a detailed study of the law; that he might be ignorant of the
technical steps to be taken in the collection of a promissory note, but
he would know something about the resources of a treaty; that if he did
not know how to settle the title to a farmer's field, he had considered
ways to put at rest any claim of England to the territory of the Oregon.
Yet he had to live as a lawyer before he could flourish as a statesman.
And he had become the prosecuting attorney. His enemies said it was by a
trick; that he had had the state law changed so that the legislature
could appoint him st