old friend and a sympathetic adherent. I told him to use me in
any way that would serve him.

Having all these enterprises on his hands he was leaving for Mobile in
the morning. No time to see a bull fight. "I'll not say good night to
Mrs. Miles," he said. "Let her sleep." He got up to tiptoe away. "Good
night, Senator," called Dorothy. She had aroused at the cessation of our
talk. Douglas returned and in his most gallant manner bade Dorothy good
night. Then he strode away, stepped through the trapdoor, began to
descend, disappeared. I looked up at the great stars. Then lifting
Dorothy into my arms, I carried her to the stairs and on my back to our
room.

CHAPTER XLV

Dorothy and I lingered in Havana until we were sure that spring had come
to Chicago. Then we took a boat to New Orleans; and once again I
ascended the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to Chicago by the
Illinois River and the canal.

It was still cool in Chicago, the air fresh and vital. Great spaces of
deep blue stood far back, cool and thrillingly serene; against these
spaces the white clouds coming over from the far west and disappearing
into havens over the lake and into Michigan. The lake was roaring to the
stiff breezes of the blustering spring.

Chicago was a thrilling spectacle. The Illinois Central railroad was
being built. The railroad mileage in the country had now risen to more
than ten thousand miles. The short roads with steamboat connections were
giving way to the trunk lines. Boston was now connected by rail with
Montreal. There were nine hundred miles of railroad in Ohio; six hundred
in Indiana; about four hundred in Illinois. The Michigan Central
connected Chicago with Detroit. The Michigan Southern was opened, and
the first train from the East had entered Chicago. A train had started
west from St. Louis on the first five miles of the Pacific railroad.
Telegraph lines stuck forth everywhere into the great spaces of the
country, like the new shoots of a tree.

The breech-loading gun had been invented. The fire-alarm telegram system
had come into use.

Thackeray had come over from England to smile upon us genially, to
lecture at the rate "of a pound a minute," as he had expressed it. Young
America was putting old America behind her.

Calhoun was gone. Clay, defeated in his life's ambition to be President,
had crept to his grave. Webster was a dying man. The slavery question
had vexed and shadowed his dying years. He had