t
and help build up the West."

I asked Douglas if I should move to Chicago. His eyes brightened. "Yes,"
he said in his quick way. "That is a place of great opportunity. Go
there, Jim. I will be there myself, eventually. You can become very rich
there with the capital that you have for a start."

Then I told him that I was trying to sell the farm; that I had about
matured my plans to move. He was delighted. "I'll miss you here, but a
friend is a friend to me, even up there. Go and build. You can help make
a city. I want to see this state come into its own. I want to see
schools everywhere, giving the advantages to the young which were denied
to me. This is the most wonderful of states. Be glad that your destiny
brought you here. At the present rate of immigration the population of
Illinois will soon be a million. When you came here the population of
the United States was about twelve million; now it is about seventeen
million; it will soon be twenty million. Do you appreciate these
figures? Look at the New Englanders, the Irish, the Germans that have
poured into Illinois. Some of them come here with ideas that I find
hostile to my ambitions. I have to win them to the liberty of the
Democratic party, and keep them from stopping halfway, contented with
the fraudulent liberty of the Whigs. I take them in hand at political
gatherings; I love to persuade and shape them. I will fill this
population of Illinois with love of Democratic ideas. What have the
Whigs to offer? Look at the mixed blood of the Whigs, at their tainted
ancestors. I take the greatest pleasure in exposing them. It is my fun
and my work."

With all this intellectual activity, Douglas was not a reader. I had
found Emerson through Abigail; I read the _North American Review_, and
Cooper's novels as they appeared. But Douglas had contempt for the moral
idealism of New England. He thought it impractical. "You can't have a
brain without a body," said Douglas. "Let the country develop its bones,
its muscles, attain its stature. These men think the world is run by
righteousness, especially if you let them prescribe the righteousness.
But it isn't. It is run by interests. Roofs, clothing, and food must be
taken care of; then cities. These men get preconceived ideas of God, and
then want to force them on the great impulses of life. But they can't do
it."

I ventured to say that the two ran together. His reply was that nothing
of idealism counted that did not har