s." He
never liked this little man, in opposing whom he was to come to the
fulness of his power on the platform. It is evident that Lincoln regarded
him as an able advocate of small sincerity looking chiefly for personal
advancement.

There is a passage in the diary which illustrates the character of
Douglas and Lincoln's knowledge of it. The passage relates to a day in
the famous debates of 1858. Lincoln had not reached Havana in time to
hear the speech of his opponent. A great crowd had come by train and in
wagons. Taking advantage of his absence Douglas had called Lincoln "a
liar, a coward and a sneak" and declared that he was going to fight him.

Lincoln heard of this and said in his speech:

"I shall not fight with Judge Douglas. A fight could prove nothing at
issue in this campaign. It might prove that he is a more muscular man
than I or that I am a more muscular man than he, but this subject is not
mentioned in either platform. Again he and I are really very good friends
and when we are together he would no more think of fighting me than of
fighting his wife. Therefore when the Judge talked about fighting he was
not giving vent to any ill feeling but was trying to excite--well, let us
say enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience."

Justice accomplished her ends now and then with comic displays of
violence in the prairie capital. One night Abe Lincoln and certain of his
friends captured a shoe-maker who had beaten his wife and held him at the
village pump while the aggrieved woman gave him a sound thrashing. So
this phase of imperialism was cured in Springfield by "hair off the same
dog" as Lincoln put it.

One evening while E.D. Baker was speaking in the crowded village court
room above Lincoln's office and was rudely interrupted and in danger of
assault, the long legs of Honest Abe suddenly appeared through a scuttle
hole in the ceiling above the platform. He leaped upon it and seizing a
stone water pitcher defied any one to interfere with the right of free
speech in a worthy cause.

So it will be seen that there were zestful moments in these sundry
vindications of the principles of Democracy in the prairie capital.

About this time Miss Mary Todd, the daughter of a Kentucky banker,
arrived in Springfield to visit her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards. She
was a fashionably dressed, good-looking girl of blue-gray eyes and dark
hair. She had been well educated in the schools of Lexington and could
s