I would
like to know why you did n't tell the truth about it. And then again "He
laid up seven days." He put this in print for the people of the country to
read as a serious document. I think if he had been in his sober senses he
would not have risked that barefacedness in the presence of thousands of
his own friends who knew that I made speeches within six of the seven days
at Henry, Marshall County, Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough
County, including all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport
at the end of the six days. Now I say there is no charitable way to look
at that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy. There is
another thing in that statement that alarmed me very greatly as he states
it, that he was going to "trot me down to Egypt." Thereby he would have
you infer that I would not come to Egypt unless he forced me--that I
could not be got here unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here. That
statement he makes, too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the
stipulation to come down here and that he himself had been very reluctant
to enter into the stipulation. More than all this: Judge Douglas, when
he made that statement, must have been crazy and wholly out of his sober
senses, or else he would have known that when he got me down here, that
promise--that windy promise--of his powers to annihilate me, would n't
amount to anything. Now, how little do I look like being carried away
trembling? Let the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour, I
want you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay and rot here; and
if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel and
put him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, then, here is something
extraordinary in this statement. I ask you if you know any other living
man who would make such a statement? I will ask my friend Casey, over
there, if he would do such a thing? Would he send that out and have his
men take it as the truth? Did the Judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt
to scare me to death? Why, I know this people better than he does. I was
raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this people. But the
Judge was raised farther north, and perhaps he has some horrid idea of
what this people might be induced to do. But really I have talked about
this matter perhaps longer than I ought, for it is no great thing; and yet
the smallest are often the most difficult things to d