then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch patience
and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into
the legal field yet. Poor fellow, he could foresee that it was going to
take him such a weary long time to do it.

He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his
hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into
the universe of ideas, and studied it, and experimented upon it at his
house. One of his pet fads was palmistry. To another one he gave no
name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but
merely said it was an amusement. In fact, he had found that his fads
added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; there, he was growing chary of
being too communicative about them. The fad without a name was one which
dealt with people's finger marks. He carried in his coat pocket a
shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five
inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip
was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands
through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the
natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it
with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row
of faint grease prints he would write a record on the strip of white
paper--thus:

JOHN SMITH, right hand--

and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smith's left hand on
another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand." The
strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among
what Wilson called his "records."