of varied import, according to their attitude.

For one thing he had married while I was in the war. Mother Clayton
approved the marriage. Abigail mocked it. For his wife was a southern
woman, the owner of many slaves in Mississippi. Douglas had announced
that he would have nothing to do with her property, especially with the
slaves. But how was he to escape a derivative gain? So Abigail asked. I
knew that he disliked the institution; but here it was touching him
again in a peculiarly intimate way. Texas soiled him with its influence
and now his marriage identified him with it. He might regard it, if he
would, as a domestic matter like the liquor business, which Maine had
just now laid low by a prohibition law. As he would not be a liquor
dealer, so he would not be a slave owner. But he was the next thing to
it in the circumstance of his marriage.

But in my absence he had moved to Chicago, and this gave me great
happiness. I should now see much of him. He was speculating in land and
growing rich. He was advocating the immediate construction of the
Illinois Central railroad. He had been triumphantly reelected to
Congress. The Mexican War had helped to do that for him. He was only
thirty-four, but a great and growing figure.

Chicago had changed in my absence. The second water system, consisting
of a reservoir at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Water Street, and a
pump, operated by a 25-horsepower engine, was soon to be supplanted by a
crib sunk in the lake 600 feet from shore, from which the water was to
be drawn by a 200-horsepower engine. The lake traffic had increased
enormously. The Illinois and Michigan canal was soon to be opened.

Mother Clayton had saved for me the copies of Niles' _Register_ and had
marked passages in Douglas' speeches in Congress, particularly his
effective retorts to the aged J. Q. Adams, who pursued Douglas with
inveterate hostility. It was all about the slavery question.

I looked Douglas up as soon as possible. We invited him and his young
wife to dinner. Surely he had found a charming and interesting mate. We
now had so much of life in common and of mutual memory to draw upon. He
was eager to hear of the war, the battles I had been in. He was very
proud of me and happy beyond measure that I had come out of the war
without a scar.

How strange about Colonel Hardin! "An able man, that," said Douglas,
"but I don't believe he ever forgave me for taking the state's
attorneyship from hi