Stephen was on the point of claiming Boston, but wisely hesitated.

“I’m from St. Louis, with a message for Mr. Lincoln,” he replied.

“Ye talk like y e was from down East,” said the citizens who seemed in the humor for conversation.  “I reckon old Abe’s’ too busy to see you.  Say, young man, did you ever hear of Stephen Arnold Douglas, alias the Little Giant, alias the Idol of our State, sir?”

This was too much for Stephen, who left the citizen without the compliment of a farewell.  Continuing around the square, inquiring for Mr. Lincoln’s house, he presently got beyond the stores and burning pavements on to a plank walk, under great shade trees, and past old brick mansions set well back from the street.  At length he paused in front of a wooden house of a dirty grayish brown, too high for its length and breadth, with tall shutters of the same color, and a picket fence on top of the retaining wall which lifted the yard above the plank walk.  It was an ugly house, surely.  But an ugly house may look beautiful when surrounded by such heavy trees as this was.  Their shade was the most inviting thing Stephen had seen.  A boy of sixteen or so was swinging on the gate, plainly a very mischievous boy, with a round, laughing, sunburned face and bright eyes.  In front of the gate was a shabby carriage with top and side curtains, hitched to a big bay horse.

“Can you tell me where Mr. Lincoln lives?” inquired Stephen.

“Well, I guess,” said the boy.  “I’m his son, and he lives right here when he’s at home.  But that hasn’t been often lately.”

“Where is he?” asked Stephen, beginning to realize the purport of his conversations with citizens.

Young Mr. Lincoln mentioned the name of a small town in the northern part of the state, where he said his father would stop that night.  He told Stephen that he looked wilted, invited him into the house to have a glass of lemonade, and to join him and another boy in a fishing excursion with the big bay horse.  Stephen told young Mr. Lincoln that he should have to take the first train after his father.

“Jimmy!” exclaimed the other, enviously, “then you’ll hear the Freeport debate.”

Now it has been said that the day was scorching hot.  And when Stephen had got back to the wooden station, and had waited an hour for the Bloomington express, his anxiety to hear the Freeport debate was not as keen as it might have been.  Late in the afternoon he changed at Bloomington to the Illinois Central Railroad:  The sun fell down behind the cardboard edge of the prairie, the train rattled on into the north, wrapped in its dust and Smoke, and presently became a long comet, roaring red, to match that other comet which flashed in the sky.

By this time it may be said that our friend was heartily sick of his mission, He tried to doze; but two men, a farmer and a clerk, got in at a way station, and sat behind him.  They began to talk about this man Lincoln.