you. My
love to you, dear grandmama. And do write me as often as you can.

"Affectionately, James."

And that evening Douglas came. He was of the smallest stature, but with
a huge chest and enormous head. His hair was abundant and flowing,
tossed back from his full forehead like a cataract. His eyes were blue
and penetrating, but kindly. His face rather square. His voice deep and
resonant. His words were clearly spoken, and fell from his lips freely,
as if he were loosening them into a channel worn by long thinking. His
ideas were clearly envisioned. He had read books of which I had never
heard. But apart from books his sallies of wit, the aptness of his
stories and allusions quite dazzled me.

Though he was but two years my senior, I felt like a boy in his
presence. His maturity and self-possession and intellectual mastery of
the hour kept me silent. He recalled what he had done to bring me to the
comforts of Mrs. Spurgeon's house when I arrived in Jacksonville, ill
and helpless. After that he did not exactly ignore me, but I seemed not
to enter into the association of his ideas or their expression. He
talked of the country. There was the matter of Texas, a territory half
as large as central Europe. But if Texas seceded from Mexico he wished
the country absorbed into the domain of the United States. Texas has a
right to secede. All governments derive their powers from the consent of
the governed. Let moralists and dreamers say what they would, the course
of America was toward mastery of the whole of North America. Yes, and
there was Oregon. If the Louisiana Purchase of 1804 did not include
Oregon, what of the Lewis and Clark expedition; what of the founding of
Astoria by Mr. Astor of New York, on the shores of the Columbia River;
what of the restoration of Astoria to the United States in 1818 after it
had been forcibly seized by Great Britain in the War of 1812? Douglas
looked forward to the day when Great Britain would not have an inch of
land from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole, and from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. All of this vast territory should be the abiding place of
liberty forever. Homestead laws should be passed with reference to it,
and settlers invited to reduce it to cultivation. It should be tilled by
millions of husbandmen, the most intelligent and progressive of the
world. It should be crossed by railroads and canals. Already there were
the Mohawk and Hudson railroad, the Boston and Albany, and