thought, however abstruse, can be put in speech that a boy or a negro can
grasp. Any book, however deep, can be written in terms that everybody can
comprehend, if a man only tries hard enough. When I was a boy I used to
hear the neighbors talking, and it bothered me so because I could not
understand them that I used to sit up half the night thinking things out
for myself. I remember that I did not know what the word demonstrate
meant. So I stopped my studies then and there and got a volume of Euclid.
Before I got through I could demonstrate everything in it, and I have
never been bothered with demonstrate since."

I thought of those wonderfully limpid speeches of his: of the Freeport
debates, and of the contrast between his style and Douglas's. And I
understood the reason for it at last. I understood the supreme mind that
had conceived the Freeport Question. And as I stood before him then, at
the close of this fearful war, the words of the Gospel were in my mind.
'So the last shall be first, and the first, last; for many be called, but
few chosen.'

How I wished that all those who have maligned and tortured him could talk
with him as I had talked with him. To know his great heart would disarm
them of all antagonism. They would feel, as I feel, that his life is so
much nobler than theirs, and his burdens so much heavier, that they would
go away ashamed of their criticism.

He said to me once, "Brice, I hope we are in sight of the end, now. I hope
that we may get through without any more fighting. I don't want to see
any more of our countrymen killed. And then," he said, as if talking to
himself, "and then we must show them mercy--mercy."

I thought it a good time to mention Colfax's case. He has been on my mind