Good Lord! I never see anything like it. In ten minutes he was about eight feet tall; his face was white, his eyes was blazin’ fire, and he was thunderin’, “Kansas shall be free!” “Ballots, not bullets!” “We won’t go out of the Union and you sha’n’t!” Generally when he was speakin’, he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm--but your head was workin’; but that time up to Bloomington he was like--what’s that the Bible calls it?--“avengin’ fire”--yes, sir, that’s it, he was like “avengin’ fire.” I never knew exactly what did happen there. All I recollect is that at the beginnin’ of that speech I was settin’ in the back of the room, and when I come to I was hangin’ on to the front of the platform. I recollect I looked up and seen Jo Medill standin’ on the reporter’s table lookin’ foolish-like and heard him say: “Good Lord, boys, I ain’t took a note!” Fact was he’d stampeded that audience, reporters and all. I’ve always thought that speech made the Republican party in Illinois. It melted ’em together. ’Twa’n’t arguments they needed just then, it was meltin’ together of what they’d heard. Well, he went right on speakin’ after that, must ’a’ made forty or fifty speeches all over the State, for Fremont, and he got no end of invitations from Indiana and Iowa and Kansas and all around to come over and speak. Old Billy Herndon used to come in here and brag about it. You’d thought ’twas him was gittin’ ’em. Always seemed to think he owned Lincoln anyway. By the time the Republicans wanted a man for United States Senate Lincoln was first choice, easy enough, and the first thing anybody knew if he didn’t up and challenge Douglas, who the Democrats was runnin’, to seven debates--seven joint debates, they called ’em. You could ’a’ knocked me over with a feather when I heard that. I couldn’t think of anybody I knew challengin’ Mr. Douglas. It seemed impertinent, him bein’ what I thought him. But I was glad they was goin’ to thresh it out. You see I was feelin’ mighty uncertain in my mind by this time. Somehow I couldn’t seem to git around the p’ints I’d been hearin’ Mr. Lincoln make so much. However, I didn’t have no idee but what Mr. Douglas would show clear enough where he was wrong. So when I heard about the debates, I says to Ma, “Johnnie can take care of the store, I’m goin’ to hear ’em.”