Standing up, the very person of the Little Giant was contradictory, as was the man himself.  His height was insignificant.  But he had the head and shoulders of a lion, and even the lion’s roar.  What at contrast the ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln’s opening words.  If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly disappointed.  Mr. Douglas was far from dismay.  As if to show the people how lightly he held his opponent’s warnings, he made them gape by putting things down Mr. Lincoln’s shirt-front and taking them out of his mouth:  But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that the Judge was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might lead one to expect.  Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at Freeport?  And yet it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his hearers “Black Republicans.”  “Not black,” came from the crowd again and again, and once a man:  shouted, “Couldn’t you modify it and call it brown?” “Not a whit!” cried the Judge, and dubbed them “Yankees,” although himself a Vermonter by birth.  He implied that most of these Black Republicans desired negro wives.

But quick,—­to the Question, How was the Little Giant, artful in debate as he was, to get over that without offence to the great South?  Very skillfully the judge disposed of the first of the interrogations.  And then, save for the gusts of wind rustling the trees, the grove might have been empty of its thousands, such was the silence that fell.  But tighter and tighter they pressed against the stand, until it trembled.

Oh, Judge, the time of all artful men will come at length.  How were you to foresee a certain day under the White Dome of the Capitol?  Had your sight been long, you would have paused before your answer.  Had your sight been long, you would have seen this ugly Lincoln bareheaded before the Nation, and you are holding his hat.  Judge Douglas, this act alone has redeemed your faults.  It has given you a nobility of which we did not suspect you.  At the end God gave you strength to be humble, and so you left the name of a patriot.

Judge, you thought there was a passage between Scylla and Charybdis which your craftiness might overcome.

“It matters not,” you cried when you answered the Question, “it matters not which way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution.  The people have the lawful means to introduce or to exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations.”

Judge Douglas, uneasy will you lie to-night, for you have uttered the Freeport Heresy.

It only remains to be told how Stephen Brice, coming to the Brewster House after the debate, found Mr. Lincoln.  On his knee, in transports of delight, was a small boy, and Mr. Lincoln was serenely playing on the child’s Jew’s-harp.  Standing beside him was a proud father who had dragged his son across two counties in a farm wagon, and who was to return on the morrow to enter this event in the family Bible.  In a corner of the room were several impatient gentlemen of influence who wished to talk about the Question.