Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for philosophical contemplation.  I have been treating it in that way, and I have really come to the conclusion that I can explain it in no other way than by believing the Judge is crazy.  If he was in his right mind I cannot conceive how he would have risked disgusting the four or five thousand of his own friends who stood there and knew, as to my having been carried from the platform, that there was not a word of truth in it.

[Judge Douglas:  Did n’t they carry you off?]

There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas exactly.  He smiles now, and says, “Did n’t they carry you off?” but he said then “he had to be carried off”; and he said it to convince the country that he had so completely broken me down by his speech that I had to be carried away.  Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, “Did n’t they carry you off?” Yes, they did.  But, Judge Douglas, why didn’t you tell the truth?  I would like to know why you did n’t tell the truth about it.  And then again “He laid up seven days.”  He put this in print for the people of the country to read as a serious document.  I think if he had been in his sober senses he would not have risked that barefacedness in the presence of thousands of his own friends who knew that I made speeches within six of the seven days at Henry, Marshall County, Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough County, including all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport at the end of the six days.  Now I say there is no charitable way to look at that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy.  There is another thing in that statement that alarmed me very greatly as he states it, that he was going to “trot me down to Egypt.”  Thereby he would have you infer that I would not come to Egypt unless he forced me—­that I could not be got here unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here.  That statement he makes, too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the stipulation to come down here and that he himself had been very reluctant to enter into the stipulation.  More than all this:  Judge Douglas, when he made that statement, must have been crazy and wholly out of his sober senses, or else he would have known that when he got me down here, that promise—­that windy promise—­of his powers to annihilate me, would n’t amount to anything.  Now, how little do I look like being carried away trembling?  Let the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour, I want you all, if I can’t go home myself, to let me stay and rot here; and if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel and put him to bed, let me stay here and rot.  I say, then, here is something extraordinary in this statement.  I ask you if you know any other living man who would make such a statement?  I will ask my friend Casey, over there, if he would do such a thing?  Would he send that out and have his men take it as the truth?