The next day I went out to look at the ten acres which Douglas had given
for the founding of the University of Chicago. I walked over the ground,
came to the lake. I was thinking that if Douglas' life were ending in
failure how futile was my own life! I was rich to be sure, but what had
I done? I had inherited money. Douglas had started in poverty and
accumulated a fortune. I had done nothing but increase my wealth.
Douglas' activities had covered many fields, and now if he was to fall!
What was American liberty? How could their devotion to a liberty, bring
liberty to him? Douglas' wife was dead; Dorothy was an invalid.
In a few days I went around to see Abigail. That terrible evening
remained a subject that must sometime be discussed between us.
Abigail was never more gracious than on this occasion, and seemed to
understand that I needed to be lifted out of my reflections. She knew
what Dorothy's invalidism meant to me, and she was sympathetic with my
devotion to Douglas, in so far as it was an expression of human
friendship. She had a point of view about everything, which had been
developed and clarified by reading and travel. It came over me that I
had been nowhere in Europe, that I had been wandering up and down
America. My life in England was by now almost obliterated from my
consciousness. We were not long in the talk before she said that a man
should have more than one interest, that music or some form of art, or a
hobby in literature should be taken up as a relaxation from business.
What were politics but the interpretation of business? She showed me
some pictures she had been painting. A teacher had opened a studio in
Lake Street. Why did I not try my hand? I would find it a diversion from
other things. I had always loved etchings. I wished I could do that.
Well, this artist taught etching too. She inspired me at once to see
him. His name was Stoddard, and she gave me the number. I conceived an
enthusiasm for this new activity, thinking that it would take me out of
myself and away from the America that was closing around me with such
depressing effect.
Then Abigail and Aldington in supplement of each other began to recall
the names of men then living whom they characterized as light-bearers.
"Really," said Abigail, "there are only a few men of real importance in
America to-day. These politicians and orators--Seward, Sumner, even the
late Webster--amount to very little after all. They are even less than
Lowell, whom Margaret Fuller recently characterized as shallow and
doomed to oblivion. Longfellow is an adapter, a translator, a
simple-hearted man. Whittier--well, all of them have fallen more or
less under the moralistic influence of the country."
"That is what I like about Douglas," I said. "He is not a humbug. I like
his ironical voice against all these silly movements, like liquor laws;
these ideas like God in the little affairs of men; all this barbarism
which breaks into religious manias; all these half-baked reformations.
They carry me with him into an opposition to negro equality--all this
stuff of Horace Greeley, Emerson, and in which men like Seward and
Sumner, and American writers and poets, big and little, share."
"Oh, yes," said Abigail, "but after all you can say Douglas is just a
politician. You do not need to grieve about him. He is tough enough to
stand anything. He was put down by that mob. But I dare say he was not
as much disturbed about it as you were. If he should die to-day what
would the world lose? He has no great unfinished books, no half-painted
pictures, no musical scores without the final touches. Look over the
world, my friend. Do you realize who is living in it to-day? In Russia,
Tolstoi and Turgenieff; in Germany, Schopenhauer, Freytag, Liszt,
Wagner--Wagner is just Douglas' age too. In France, Hugo, George Sand,
Renan, Berlioz, Bizet. In England, Tennyson, Macaulay. These are only a
few. What has Douglas written or said that will live? What has he done
that will carry an influence to a future day? I want to see you lift
yourself out of this. Frankly, you seem to me like a man who has never
come to himself. You have lived here in Illinois since you were a boy.
You found work to do, and you did it. You wanted to be rich, you have
had your wish. But the material you have handled has become you. 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. Had I made a god of a poor piece of clay?
No, it was not true. I knew him, I believed in him. He was the clearest
voice in all this rising absurdity of American life. But Abigail had
given me one idea that I wished to act upon.
I went the next day to see Stoddard and started to learn etching. If I
could only transfer to the copper plate what I had seen of sand hills,
pines, pools of water, the gulls over the lake, the picturesque shacks
of early Chicago of 1833 and 1840; the old wooden drawbridge, which was
over the river in 1834, with the ships beyond it toward the lake and the
lighthouse, and in the forefront canoes on the shore, covered with
rushes and sand grass. After a few days I saw Douglas. He came on an
evening when I was just about to go to him. I had been thinking of him
day by day, but waiting for the effect of his rough experience in front
of the North Market to wear away from his thoughts and mine. He was now
himself again, his eye keen, his voice melodious, his figure pervaded by
animation. I noticed perhaps for the first time how small and graceful
were his hands. The greatness and shapeliness of his head could not be
overlooked. From beneath shaggy and questioning brows his penetrating
eyes looked straight through me. Had his pride been wounded, his spirits
dampened? Not at all. He was willing to face any audience anywhere. He
had told the South unpleasant truths. He had satirized the groups that
went to the making of the Republican party. "I have a creed," he said,
"as broad as the continent. I can preach it boldly, and without apology
North or South, East or West. I can face Toombs or Davis, if they preach
sectional strife, or advocate disunion. I can continue to point out the
narrow faith of Sumner and Seward. I shall not abate my contempt for the
ragged insurrectionists who are going about the country for lack of
better business, scattering dissension. Am I to be President? There is
trouble now in Kansas and Nebraska. Can I help that? I have stood for
the right of the people there to have slavery or not as they chose. But
if any trick is played on either of them, whether in favor of slavery or
against it, they will find me on the spot ready to fight for an honest
deal."
Seeing Douglas in all his strength and self-confidence again I was
happy. We talked of the old days and drank from the old bottle. I took
him to the door, followed his retreating figure down the street, so
short but so massive. Then I went to Dorothy, to find her sleepless and
unhappy.