great confidence in his future.  He had taken the style of Webster for his model.  He no longer used the broad humor which had characterized his efforts on the stump.  A study of the best speeches of the great New Englander had made him question its value in a public address.  Dignity, clear reasoning and impressiveness were the chief aims of his new method, the latter of which is aptly illustrated by this passage from his speech in reply to Douglas in the debate mentioned: 

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“If I ever feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect it is when I contemplate the cause of my country deserted by all the world besides, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.  Here without contemplating consequences before high heaven and in the face of the world I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty and my love.”

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In these perfervid utterances one may find little to admire save a great spirit seeking to express itself and lacking as yet the refinement of taste equal to his undertaking.  He was no heaven-born genius “sprung in full panoply from the head of Jove.”  He was just one of the slow, common folk, with a passion for justice and human rights, slowly feeling his way upward.  His spirit was growing.  Strong in its love and knowledge of common men and of the things necessary to their welfare, it was beginning to seek and know “the divine power of words.”  Every moment of leisure he gave to the study of Webster and Burke and Byron and Shakespeare and Burns.  He had begun to study the art of Irving and Walter Scott and of a new writer of the name of Dickens.  There were four men who slept with him, in the room above Speed’s store, and one of them has told how he used to lie sprawled on the floor, with his pillow and candle, reading long after the others had gone to sleep.  Samson writes that he never knew a man who understood the art of using minutes as he did.  A detached minute was to him a thing to be filled with value.  Yet there were few men so deeply in love with fun.  He loved to laugh at a story-telling and to match his humor with Thompson Campbell—­a famous raconteur—­and to play with children.  Fun was as necessary to him as sleep.  He searched for it in people and in books.

He came often to Samson’s house to play with “Mr. Nimble” and to talk with Joe.  Some of his best thoughts came when he was talking with Joe and some of his merriest moments when he was playing with “Mr. Nimble.”  He confessed that it was the latter that reminded him that he had better be looking for a wife.