the cause of the poor. There was nothing of the dreamer in his
make-up, the eccentric idealist. His big nose and mouth and Henry Clay
forehead denied all of this. He sat in self-possession, in poise,
clothed in the order of confident reason, unafraid, sure of himself but
without vanity, in a wise detachment, on a vantage point of vision. His
frock coat, rusty from dust and wear, did not fit him. The sleeves
escaped his wrists by several inches; his trousers had hitched up as he
sat down, so that one half of his shanks was exposed to view, leaving
his monstrous feet, like the slap-boots of a negro minstrel, for
ludicrous inches over the floor. His neck was long and feminine, and
stuck up grotesquely much above a sort of Byronic collar held together
by a black stock tie. I had never seen a man so absurd.

Douglas was as ludicrously short as Lincoln was tall; broad shouldered
where Lincoln was narrow; thick chested where Lincoln was thin; big
headed where Lincoln was small; of massive brow where Lincoln was full
and shapely; of strong bull-like neck where Lincoln was small and
delicate; of short, compact, powerful body where Lincoln was tall,
loosely constructed, awkward, and muscular. Douglas' face wore
determination, seriousness, force, pugnacity, and endurance. But his
hair was grayer than mine; he looked tired. He arose and in that great
melodious voice which always thrilled me, he said: "It is now nearly
four months since the canvass between Mr. Lincoln and myself commenced."

He went on and controverted Mr. Lincoln's "house divided against
itself," going over the ground of the previous debate. There was not a
sound of disturbance in the audience. They were in a charm, a trance.
Oratory could rise to no greater heights. Then after saying that the
Declaration of Independence did not include the negro, Indians, or Fiji
Islanders, but that all dependent races should be treated nevertheless
with fairness, and that it did not follow that because a negro was an
inferior he must be a slave, he appealed to the rights of the states and
the territories to control slavery for themselves. He closed with these
memorable words:

"Why can we not thus have peace? Why should we allow a sectional party
to agitate this country, to array the North against the South, and
convert us into enemies instead of friends merely that a few ambitious
men may ride into power on a sectional hobby? How long is it since these
ambitious northern men