Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/54

 specimens of “beautiful speaking,” of so-called “hifalutin,” so inflated with extravagant conceits and big, high-sounding words, that now they would only provoke laughter, while at that time they were taken quite seriously, or even admired as fine oratory. Now and then one would hear in the course of a speech an old-fashioned Latin quotation, usually coming from some Southern man or some New Englander. But I also heard several speeches which were not only rich in thought but in an eminent degree vigorous, sober, and elegant in language.

My most distinct recollections are of the Senate. The most conspicuous figure in that body was Douglas. He was a man of low stature, but broad-shouldered and big-chested. His head, sitting upon a stout, strong neck, was the very incarnation of forceful combativeness; a square jaw and broad chin; a rather large, firm-set mouth; the nose straight and somewhat broad; quick, piercing eyes with a deep, dark, scowling, menacing horizontal wrinkle between them; a broad forehead and an abundance of dark hair which at that period he wore rather long and which, when in excitement, he shook and tossed defiantly like a lion's mane. The whole figure was compact and strongly knit and muscular, as if made for constant fight. He was not inaptly called “the little giant” by his partisans. His manner of speech accorded exactly with his appearance. His sentences were clear-cut, direct, positive. They went straight to the mark like bullets, and sometimes like cannon-balls, tearing and crashing. There was nothing ornate, nothing imaginative in his language, no attempt at “beautiful speaking.” But it would be difficult to surpass his clearness and force of statement when his position was right; or his skill in twisting logic or in darkening the subject with extraneous, unessential matter, when he was wrong; or his defiant tenacity when he was driven to defend himself, or his keen