He lived a life of sensations; and that he commenced early is clearly shown by the fact that he was a subject of newspaper comment when but two months old.  At that age he had the misfortune to lose his father, who, holding the baby boy in his arms, fell back in his chair and died, while Stephen, dropping from his embrace, was caught from the fire, and thus from early death, by a neighbor, John Conant, who opportunely entered the room at the moment.  And here let me say, that for generations back the ancestors of Douglas were sturdy men, of physical strength and mental ability.  His grandfather was noted for his strong practical common sense, which, rightly applied, with industry, made him in middle life the possessor of wealth, and the finest farm on Otter Creek.  This, however, in later years was gradually taken from him, by means which had better, perhaps, remain unmentioned.  The father of Stephen was a physician of more than ordinary talent and of much culture.  He had attained but to early manhood, when a sudden attack of heart-disease removed him from life, and compelled his widow, with her infant boy, to face the world alone.

A bachelor brother of the Widow Douglas took her and the baby to his farm, where, for several years, the one mourned the loss of her husband, while the other grew in strength and muscle.  The earlier developments of the boy were characteristic, and typical of those in later life.  He was very quick, magnetic in his temperament, and full to the brim with wit and humor.  Beyond his uncle’s farm ran the far-famed Otter Creek, whose waters, in my boyhood, were forbidden me, as inevitably leading the incautious bather to “a life of misery and a premature death.”  There it was, however, that Stephen earned his earliest triumphs.  It is a long pull across the Otter Pond, and the schoolmaster’s last charge was always, “Keep this side of the rock in the middle,—­don’t try to cross”; but reckless then of life as since in politics, self-confident and daring as always, Douglas, of all the boys, alone dared disobey the charge, and succeeded in reaching safely the opposite shore.

His companions, sons of farmers well to do in the world, were preparing to enter college; and Douglas, the best scholar in his class, the finest mathematician in the township, and who without instruction had mastered the Latin Grammar and “Viri Romae,” applied to his uncle for permission to join them.  The uncle, however, never noted for much liberality either of brain or pocket, having taken to himself a wife and gotten to himself a boy, was unable to see the necessity of giving the orphan a college education, and pitilessly bound him to a worthy deacon of the church, as an apprentice to the highly respectable, but rarely famous, trade of cabinet-making.  In this Douglas did well.  It has been stated elsewhere that “he was not fond of his trade,” and that “his spirit pined for loftier employment.”  Possibly.  But for all that he succeeded in it,