interests; and we talked
of Douglas too.

Mr. Williams thought that Douglas was getting deeper and deeper into
trouble. The Compromises of 1850 were only partially satisfactory. They
had not appeased the Abolitionists. A new party was growing up around
the discontent which those Compromises had created. Mr. Pierce's
administration had met some disturbances, though it had sufficed in the
main. He had gone into office with the support of many of the best men
of the country, as, for example, Bryant, the poet, and of course
Hawthorne, his boyhood friend. Since his election the Whig party had
gone to pieces. There was no party but the Democratic party. Beside it
nothing but factions and groups trying to find a way to unite. Chief of
these was the Know-nothings who stood for what they called Americanism,
and raised an opposition to Catholicism. Next were the Abolitionists.
There were smaller bodies, all inharmonious. I felt that Douglas was
destined to drive these lawless resolutes into defeat and become
President. He was not in Chicago now; but I was soon to see him. In the
meanwhile I thought I would go to see Reverdy and Sarah.

Reverdy was now in the middle fifties, and aging. Sarah looked thin and
worn. She was really an old woman. Amos was a man. He had taken up with
farming near Jacksonville. Jonas was nearing his twentieth year. The
story was for the most part told for them all as one family.

Reverdy and I drove about the country; and it had changed so much.
Boundaries had disappeared; forests had vanished. Familiar houses had
given way to pretentious residences, many built in the southern style of
Tennessee or Kentucky. Great barns dotted the landscape. Yet the pioneer
was still here. My old fiddler in the woods had aged, but he was much
himself. He played for us. And we went to the log hut, in which I had
lived during my first winter on the farm. Here it was with its chimney
of sticks, its single room of all uses, the very symbol of humble life,
of solitariness in the woods. I had lived here when the country was
wild, but Reverdy said that before my coming to Illinois it was wilder
still and more lonely. "What do you think," said Reverdy, "of a man and
a woman living here in the most primitive days; no church, no schools.
No doctors to relieve suffering, or scarcely to attend a birth. No
books, or but few. The long winters of snow; silence except when
terrible storms broke over a roof like this. Imagine yourself