I once saw Stephen A. Douglas, the man who was perhaps more closely associated than any other with the fame of Lincoln, for he was the human obstacle by overcoming whom Lincoln proved his fitness for the supreme place. Douglas was a man marvellously strong. Rhodes declares it would be hard to set bounds to his ability. I saw him in 1850, when he was yet on the threshold, just beginning to make upon the country an impress of power. Fillmore had recently, through Taylor's death, become President, and was making his first visit to his home after his elevation, with members of his Cabinet and other conspicuous figures of his party. How Douglas came to be of the company I wonder, for he was an ardent Jacksonian Democrat, but there he was on the platform before the multitude, and I, a boy of sixteen, watched him curiously, for he was young as compared with the grey heads about him. His image, as he stood up to speak, is very clear to me even now--a face strong-featured and ruddy with vigour beneath a massive forehead whose thatch had the blackness and luxuriance of youth. His trunk was disproportionately large, carried on legs sturdy enough but noticeably short. The wits used to describe him as the statesman "with coat-tails very near the ground." It is worth while to remark on this physical peculiarity because it was the direct opposite of Lincoln's configuration. He, while comparatively short-bodied, had, as all the world knows, an abnormal length of limb, a fact which I suppose will account for much of his ungainly manner. In an ordinary chair he was undoubtedly uncomfortable, and hence his familiar attitude with his feet on the table or over the mantelpiece. The two fought each other long and sternly on those memorable platforms in Illinois in 1858, and in their physique there must have been, as they stood side by side, a grotesque parody of their intellectual want of harmony. Douglas's usual sobriquet was "the little giant," and it fitted well--a man of stalwart proportions oddly "sawed off." His voice was vibrant and sonorous, his mien compelling. It was no great speech, a few sentences of compliment to the city and of good-natured banter of the political foes among whom he found himself; but it was _ex pede Herculem_, a leader red-blooded to the finger-tips. I treasure the memory of this brief touch into which I once came with Douglas for I have come to think more kindly of him as he has receded. Not a few will now admit that, taken generally, his doctrine of "squatter sovereignty" was right. Congress ought not to have power to fix a status for people of future generations. If a status so fixed becomes repugnant it will be repudiated, and rightfully. Douglas was certainly cool over the woes of the blacks; but he refused, it is said, to grow rich, when the opportunity offered, from the ownership of slaves or from the proceeds of their sale. His rally to the side of Lincoln at last was finely