The morning star and Catholic messenger., 1878-08-04

your arm around my necs, Just as you are
doing row, and call me BeU!"
As debater in the Senate, Douglas
| never had superior. Always ready.
aiways strong in the possession and use Of
| facts, the chief ingredients to successful
disputatiop, alwaye good-humored and
self poss essed, be was never beaten. As q
| stump speaker he was copious, simple,
lucid, vein of homely humor running
| through his serious, Rrgumen tative style
Hls voice was commanding and melOdious.
His presence, notwithstanding his stumpy
figure, did not lack impressment He held
crowd exceiientiy we'll, guaging its true
inwardness with never failing acumen and
hitting it with rare tact.
In money matters he was thriftless. He
had a liberal spirit and generous nature,
and, though he made many profitable in
vestments, he could never save, aud was
generally hard pressed. He was not 30
potent party leader as Morton, whose
severity at times made him irresistible
But he was more ardently loved by his
folio wers. Morton's asceticism kept people
at arms length. Douglas had nothing
repellaut about him. In his affections Re
was always child. He was but forty
eight when he died: but quite worn out.
During twenty five years there had been
20 bait or rest. IL was go. go, go, all the
time with him, night and day, year in and
year out. He was go weak and nervous
when he left Washington, though no one
suspected his real condition. that the
slightest touch made him cry.
He has been in his grave now a little
more than seventeen years. Yet it seems
an age since his name thundered through
the land, the shibaleth of party warfare.
The little group of friends who surrounded
him are dead and gone. Sanders died in
obscurity, almost, if not quite in penury.
George E. Pugh, his Senatorial Fidus
Achates, is dead. His great Illinois rival
man as genial and inoffensiye as himself
fell by the hand of an assassin. William
A. Richardson, "Old Dick" as he used to
be called, Arnold Harris to whom he
always came in pecuniary distress, Col
baugh, who took his own life in Chicago
not long ago, all gone. Forney survives
an exile, self banished in q foreign land.
Beverly Tucker, alone of the coterie still
lives in hale and hearty manhood. OF his
Senatorial enemier, Jefferson Davis, Rob
ert Toombs, Jodah p. Benjamin and David
L. Yulee live. Wigfall, Green, of Missouri,
Bright, Mason and Slidell are dead.
At Char'eston in 1860. Douglas would
have been satisfied with the platform, and |
2 compromise candidate in James Guthrie.
1t was the fear of this that put Breckin- |
ridge in the field on the part of the dis
1nionists, who meant to be content with |
nothing which would not secure them a |
pretext for the secession on which they |
bad resolved. Breckinridge saw it and |
dreaded It; but he could not escape his |
political associations. From the first he
Understood that he was being
sacrificed. He came in time to hate Doug
as, whom he had formerly liked, and the
was never made up. After
;he Presidential election the two did not
peak. Douglas complained to the end of
3reckinridge's refusal to recognize him.
3reckinridge declined explanations and
'lways refused to talk about the matter.
Both are dead now-two men whose
areers were not unlike-both Democrats,
10th early advanced, both popular idols,
10Th going to their last accounts sadly in
he meridian of their years.