It has
entered the pores of your being, and become assimilated with its flesh.
You have gone on oblivious of this greater world. There is another
thing, and I have never known this to fail: you were a soldier in the
Mexican War, and the causes for which it was fought have burned
themselves into your nature. You are like a piece of clay molded and
lettered and shoved into the hot oven of war. You came forth with Young
America, Expansion burned into you. Douglas, being your close friend,
and being for these things, gave interpretations to these words. Your
glaze took the reflection of his face; and these words became other
words of like import, or imaginatively enlarged by the lights which his
winning art cast upon them. Give Douglas wit, humor, and he would carry
the whole country. For it runs after greatness of territory, railroads,
the equality of man, the superiority of the white race. As dull as the
mob is it knows that Douglas does not stand for its morality and its
God. If he had wit he could make them laugh and forget the distance that
divides him from them. We all understand why he has enemies; why the
revolutionaries from Germany, Hungary, Austria, divide in doubt over
him. But what has he to carry against them that will be a loss to the
world, if he fails?" I felt a little apologetic for my devotion to
Douglas as Abigail talked.
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