on his knee and wept like a child.
"Never," said Douglas, "was I so determined to effect a result as then.
Had Smith been taken from my protection, it would have been only when
I lay dead upon the floor." The fact that he had no right to appoint
a sheriff was not one of the "points of consideration." "How shall I
execute my will?" was probably the only question that suggested itself
to his mind at the time, and the logic of the answer in no way troubled
him. The dignity of the bench was always upheld by Judge Douglas during
the sitting of the court; but he was no stickler for form or ceremony
elsewhere.

A friend tells an amusing anecdote illustrative of his daring and
somewhat foolhardy spirit, even in mature life. Mr. Douglas, then
a judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois, was one of a number of
passengers who, on the crack steamboat "Andrew Jackson," were going down
the Mississippi. The steamer was detained several hours at Natchez,
where she was supplied with wood and water, and during the delay a huge,
hard-fisted boatman, somewhat the worse for a poor article of strychnine
whiskey, made himself very conspicuous and exceedingly obnoxious by the
continual iteration of his intense desire to fight some one. He
was fearful that he would "ruin," if his pugilistic wants were not
immediately attended to, and in manner more earnest than agreeable
invited one and all to "come ashore and have the conceit taken out" of
them. From the descriptive catalogue he gave of his own merits, the
passengers gathered that he was "a roarer," "a regular bruiser," "half
alligator, half steamboat, half snapping-turtle, with a leetle dash of
chain-lightning thrown in," and were evidently afraid of him; when the
Judge, who had been quietly smoking on the deck, stepped out upon the
quay, and, approaching the bully, said, with a peculiarly dry manner,--

"Who might you be, my big chicken, eh?"

"I'm a high-pressure steamer," roared the astonished boatman.

"And I'm a snag," replied Douglas, as he pitched into him; and before
the fellow had time to reflect, he lay sprawling in the mud.

A loud shout, mingled with derisive laughter, burst from the spectators,
all of whom knew the Judge; and while the discomfited braggart limped
sorely off, the passengers carried Douglas to the bar, where, for hours
after, a general series of jollifications ensued, and he who a few days
before had sat the embodiment of judicial dignity on the supreme bench
now