Two years after our marriage, my husband was seriously ill from an affection of the throat, and consulted Dr. Green, an eminent specialist of Philadelphia. He was ordered to a warmer climate, and forbidden to speak in or out of court. The tiny law office at a corner of the court green in Charlottesville was abandoned, and we hastened to Petersburg, near his birthplace. As it was absolutely impossible for him to exist without occupation, he purchased a newspaper, sallied forth one morning to solicit subscribers for "_The South Side Democrat_," and before a week's end was justified in beginning its issue. This step determined his career in life. He did not practise law until he came to New York in 1865. At the age of twenty-two he became an enthusiastic editor. The little _South Side Democrat_ soon evinced pluck and spirit. Its youthful editor sailed his small craft right into the troubled sea of politics, local and national, to sink or swim according to its merits and the wisdom of its pilot. It was loved of the gods, with the inevitable result,—but not until he left it. [Illustration: STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.] I remember our first meeting with Stephen A. Douglas, so soon to become a conspicuous figure in our political history. He had just returned from Europe, and was passing through Petersburg with his first wife (Miss Martin of North Carolina), and of course glad to talk with the editor of a Democratic paper, aspiring as he did to the highest office in the country. He was thirty-nine years old, and below the average height. But the word _insignificant_ could never have been applied to him. There was something in his air, his carriage, that forbade it. His massive head, his resolute face, more than compensated for his short stature. He has always been accused of rude, unconventional manners. He was enough of a courtier to inform me that I resembled the Empress Eugénie. To us he took the trouble to be charming, talked of his European experience—of everything, in fact, except the perilous stuff burning in his own bosom, his hunger for the presidency. Like my editor, he had been admitted to the bar before he had reached his majority. The parallel was to appear again later. Mr. Douglas also had been a representative in Congress at thirty. My husband was a delegate to the Democratic Convention that nominated Franklin Pierce in 1852, and Mr. Douglas suffered himself to be a candidate. The "Little Giant" received at first only 20 votes, but he steadily increased until Virginia cast her 15 votes for Mr. Pierce, after which there was "a stampede" which decided the matter. Some writer reminded Douglas that vaulting ambition overleaps itself, but added dryly, "Perhaps the little Judge never read Shakespeare and does not think of this."