's course
throughout was good. My father's church was looked on somewhat
askance. "It's lucky," said a parishioner once, "that it has a
stone face." Would Lincoln go to the Unitarian church? Promptly at
service-time Mr. Fillmore appeared with his guest, the two historic
figures side by side in the pew. Two or three rows intervened between
it and that in which sat my mother and our household. I beheld the
scene only through the eyes of my kindred, for by that time I had
flown the nest. But I may be pardoned for noting here an interesting
spectacle. As they stood during the hymns, the contrast was
picturesque. Both men had risen from the rudest conditions through
much early hardship. Fillmore had been rocked in a sap-trough in a
log-cabin scarcely better than Lincoln's early shelter, and the two
might perhaps have played an even match at splitting rails. Fillmore,
however, strangely adaptive, had taken on a marked grace of manner,
his fine stature and mien carrying a dignified courtliness which is
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 you