him up to a zest and a capacity for a further task. A little sleep
restored him to a new exuberance. Truly, he was one of the most vital
men who come into the world for a restless career.

On the way back we noted how rapidly the country was changing. The
influx of settlers was very great. Villages, towns were springing up
everywhere. Farmhouses were multiplying. Douglas was enthusiastic over
the great prosperity which was evident. As an empire builder his
imagination was stirred. If he was not elected to Congress he would have
to go back to the practice of law. At this period of his life he was the
eager and ambitious youth pressed in the matter of money. I saw his
career influenced, if not largely shaped, by material necessity. And as
it turned out in the election in August he was defeated by thirty-five
votes in a total poll of 36,000. We did not know the result of the
election until several weeks later, due to the tardy facilities for
communicating news.

He had fought against an able and experienced campaigner. He had the
handicap of extreme youth. He had to meet the slurs of "interloper," and
the charge of being a pushing newcomer. And yet he was almost elected.
There were discrepancies in the count, too. He was urged to contest the
election. But the expense was too great. He was poor.

There was much about Douglas to remind one of Napoleon: drive, will,
resourcefulness, exhaustless energy. Too bad to remit such a man to the
business of getting clients. He was not a plodder. He was a mind who saw
men in large aggregations bound to each other by policies and interests.
He knew how to handle them as material in empire building.

On that ride back to Springfield he talked to me of many things that
gave me an insight into the workings of his mind. For the dreamer, the
visionary, he had no patience; he felt contempt for the agitator and the
radical. In a theory preoccupying the human mind he saw something akin
to madness. Mormonism, abolitionism, all the various forms of propaganda
which made American life so clamorous, found a common classification in
his tabulation of men. What was really before the country? Truly, the
conquest of the wilderness, the production of wealth, the development of
national power; but always the rule of the people too. "There are two
things in my life," he said to me. "One is the fact that I got mad at my
uncle, and the other is the inspiration that I get out of these
prairies. Add to t