In opening the debate at Ottawa, Douglas said: "In the remarks I have made on the platform and the position of Mr. Lincoln, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I have known him for twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school-teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of Salem. He was more successful in his occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods. Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill everything which they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I could, and when a cabinet-maker I made a good bedstead and table, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else. I met him in the Legislature and had a sympathy with him because of the up-hill struggle we both had in life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a foot-race, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper, and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse-race or a fist-fight, excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody. I sympathized with him because he was struggling with difficulties, and so was I." To which Lincoln replied: "The Judge is woefully at fault about his friend Lincoln being a grocery-keeper. I don't know as it would be a sin if I had been; but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one Winter in a little still house up at the head of a hollow." The serious phases of the debates will now be considered. The opening speech was by Mr. Douglas. That he possessed rare power as a debater, all who heard him can bear witness. Mr. Blaine in his history says: "His mind was fertile in resources. He was master of logic. In that peculiar style of debate which in its intensity resembles a physical combat, he had no equal. He spoke with extraordinary readiness. He used good English, terse, pointed, vigorous. He disregarded the adornments of rhetoric. He never cited historic precedents except from the domain of American politics. Inside that field, his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical. He could lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions."