reaches back into
the years when he was 21 and first came to Illinois, to that substance
of his being, always inherent and of his genius, which was and is now
compact of nationalism, progress, intelligence, the firm union of
sovereign states. This is all he has to sustain him now. He has laid up
this food for the last hours, for this crisis of his soul. All souls
must lay up something spiritual, even as they must lay up food for the
winter of life, for the bleak bright hours of the soul's sterile fight.

And this old love which led him to Jackson when I was there with
Dorothy, which led him to Jackson for the great privilege of looking
into the old hero's face is all that sustains Douglas now. He is poor in
purse but rich in service and love; he can never be President if he
wished to be. This new era will take all his devotion, but it will not
even make him Senator again. But what need? The office is nothing now to
him. He has no place politically, except as a leader of all men. He is
without a party, but he has a country.

I offer him my purse. He smiles and thanks me. No time now to think of
his affairs--later perhaps. Something deeper than money friendship is
required to arouse the depths of him; and only the depths of him are
left. Will I come to hear him speak? I go.

He is on the heights now. The purest fires leap from his being. The
eloquence of great truths flows from his lips, along the melodious waves
of that voice of thunder. He has become Orpheus; his Isabel is the Union
now embodied in the strength, the beauty of the North which he has
always wooed and never won until now. The crowd draws toward him, gives
its spirit to him, casts its devotion at his feet. He is on the heights.
For Death is near him and Death is the sincerest and most authentic of
inspirers. He has nothing to ask now--only that the Union be saved. He
has no reproaches for any one except disunionists. He has become
impersonal on all things but the Union. I know that the end is near for
him. No one can speak so who is not prompted by Death.

He has fallen ill at his hotel in this Chicago that he loved and dowered
with a university and linked to the South with a great railroad in the
interests of peace and a firmer Union. I go to see him. Mrs. Douglas
cannot admit me. He is unconscious of those around him, but his soul is
at work. "Telegraph to the President and let the column move on." "Stand
for the Union." "The West, this great ..."

I