Westward the Star of Empire takes its way;
The girls link on to Lincoln, their mothers were for Clay.
At the first debate Lincoln took off his linen duster and, handing it to a bystander, said:
"Hold my coat while I stone Stephen!"
In the course of these debates Lincoln propounded questions for Mr. Douglas to answer. Brilliant as "the Little Giant" was, he was not shrewd enough to defend himself from the shafts of his opponent's wit and logic. So he fell into Lincoln's trap.
"If he does that," said Lincoln, "he may be Senator, but he can never be President. I am after larger game. The battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."
CHAPTER XVIII
How Emancipation Came to Pass
When Abraham Lincoln was a small boy he began to show the keenest sympathy for the helpless and oppressed. The only time he betrayed anger as a child was, as you already have learned, when he saw the other boys hurting a mud-turtle. In his first school "composition," on "Cruelty to Animals," his stepsister remembers this sentence: "An ant's life is as sweet to it as ours is to us."