Do for America what you would do for England, if you
were living there. She would take the whole earth if she could get it.
Let us take all of North America.
"I am planning to run for Congress again. I am stifled in this little
life. There is not enough for me to do here. I am restless to get out
and help build up the West."
I asked Douglas if I should move to Chicago. His eyes brightened. "Yes,"
he said in his quick way. "That is a place of great opportunity. Go
there, Jim. I will be there myself, eventually. You can become very rich
there with the capital that you have for a start."
Then I told him that I was trying to sell the farm; that I had about
matured my plans to move. He was delighted. "I'll miss you here, but a
friend is a friend to me, even up there. Go and build. You can help make
a city. I want to see this state come into its own. I want to see
schools everywhere, giving the advantages to the young which were denied
to me. This is the most wonderful of states. Be glad that your destiny
brought you here. At the present rate of immigration the population of
Illinois will soon be a million. When you came here the population of
the United States was about twelve million; now it is about seventeen
million; it will soon be twenty million. Do you appreciate these
figures? Look at the New Englanders, the Irish, the Germans that have
poured into Illinois.
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