said to have won him a handsome compliment from Queen Victoria--a
gentleman rotund, well-groomed, conspicuously elegant. Shoulder to
shoulder with him rose the queer, raw-boned, ramshackle frame of
the Illinoisan, draped in the artless handiwork of a prairie tailor,
surmounted by the rugged, homely face. The service, which the new
auditor followed reverently, being finished, the minister, leaving the
pulpit, gave Lincoln God-speed--and so he passed on to his greatness.
My mother, sister, and brothers--the youngest of whom before two years
were gone was to fill a soldier's grave--stood close at hand.

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