Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1908-07-31

lCoHTNUEnl

twenty-five years ago Judge Doug
las and first became acquainted. We
were both young Their - he a trifie
younger thar l. Even then we were
both ambitious-I perhaps quite as
much SO as he. With me the race of
ambition has beer a failure-a fiat
failure. With him it has been one of
splendid success. His name fills the
nation and is not unknown even in
foreign lands. l affect no contempt
for the high eminence he has reached
so reached that the oppressed of my
species might have shared with me
In the elevation, / would rather stand
on that eminence than wear the rich
est crown that ever pressed q mon
arch's BROW
Again in the pending campaign Mr..
Lincoln said: .'There is still another
disadvantage under which we labor
and to which I will invite your atten-
ton. 1t arises out of the relative po-
before the state as candidates for the
senate. Senator Douglas is of world
wide renown. All the anxious poll
ticians of his party or who had been
of his party for years past have been
looking upon him as certainly at no
distant day to be the president Of the
United States. They have seen In his
round, jolly, fruitful face postoffices,
land offices, marshalships and cabinet
appointments, ~chargesbips and foreign
missions bursting and sprouting out in
wonderful e~xuberance, ready to be laid
hold of by their greedy hands. And
as they have been gazing upon this
attractive picture so long they cannot
- the little distraction that has taken
place in the party bring themselves
to give up the charming hope; but,
with greedier anxiety, they rush about
him, sustain him and give him march
es, triumphal entries and receptions
beyond what, even in the days of his
highest prosperity, they could have
brought about in his favor. On the
contrary, nobody has aver expected
me to be president. In my poor, lean,
lank face nobody has ever seen that
any ~cabbages were sprouting out.
These are disadvantages, all taken to-
kgether. that the Republicans labor IN
der. We have to fight this battle upon
principle and principle alone"
Now hear Mr.. Douglas. In their first
Joint debate at Ottawa he said: 'In
the remarks I have made on this plat
form and the position of Mr.. Lincoln
upon 1t | mean nothing personally dis
respectful or unkind to that gentle
man. l have known him for nearly
twenty-five years. There were many
points of sympathy between us when
we first got acquainted. We were
both comparatively boys and both
struggling with poverty in a strange
land. l was a schoolteacher In the
town of Winchester and he a flourish
ing grocery keeper in the town of
Salem. He was more successful in
his occupation than l was In mine and
hence more fortunate in this worlds
goods. Lincoln is one Of those peculiar
men who perform with admirable skill
everything which they undertake. I
made as good a schoolteacher as I
could, and when a cabinetmaker l
made a good bedstead and tables, al
though my old boss said / succeeded
better with bureaus and secretaries
than with anything else, but I believe
that Lincoln was always more success
full in business than I, for his business
enabled him to get into the legislature.
l met him there, however, and had a
sympathy with him because Of the up
hill struggle we both had in life. He
was then just as good at telling an
anecdote as now. He could beat any
of the boys wrestling or running a foot
race, In pitching quoits or tossing a
copper; could ruin more liquor than all
of b boys of the town together, and
the dignity and impartiality with
which he presided at a horse race or
fist fight excited the admiration and
won the praise of everybody that was
present and participated. l sympa-
thized with him because he was strug-
Cling with difficulties, and so was l.
Mr.. Lincoln served with me in the leg
islature in 1886, when we both retired,
and he subsidized or became submerged,
and he was lost sight of as a public
man for some years. In 1916, when
Wilmot introduced his celebrated pro-
viso and the abolition tornado swept
over the country, Lincoln again turned
up as a member of congress from the
Sangamon district. / was then in the
senate of the United States and was
glad to welcome my old friend and
companion. While in congress he dis
tinguished himself by his opposition to
the Mexican war, taking the side of
the common enemy against his own
country, and when he returned home he
found that the indignation of the. peo-
pie followed him everywhere, and he
was again submerged or obliged to re-
tire into private life, forgotten by his
former friends. He came up again in
1854, just in time to make this aboli-
ton or black Republican platform, in
company with Giddings, Lovejoy,
Chase and Fred Douglass. for the Re-
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