problems were enormous in the aggregate.

Before Franklin, as before many other young men suddenly grown old,
there lay the necessity of earning a livelihood, of choosing an
occupation. The paternal arm of the Government, which had guided and
controlled so long, was now withdrawn. The young man must think for
himself. He must choose his future, and work out his way therein alone
and unsupported. The necessity of this choice, and the grave
responsibility assumed in choosing, confronted and oppressed Edward
Franklin as they did many another young man, whose life employment had
not been naturally determined by family or business associations. He
stood looking out over the way of life. There came to his soul that
indefinite melancholy known by the young man not yet acquainted with
the mysteries of life. Franklin had been taken away at the threshold
of young manhood and crowded into a rude curriculum, which taught him
reserve as well as self-confidence, but which robbed him of part of the
natural expansion in experience which is the ordinary lot of youth. He
had seen large things, and had become intolerant of the small. He
wished to achieve life, success, and happiness at one assault, and
rebelled at learning how stubborn a resistance there lies in that
perpetual silent line of earth's innumerable welded obstacles. He
grieved, but knew not why he grieved. He yearned, but named no cause.

To this young man, ardent, energetic, malcontent, there appeared the
vision of wide regions of rude, active life, offering full outlet for
all the bodily vigour of a man, and appealing not less powerfully to
his imagination. This West--no man had come back from it who was not
eager to return to it again! For the weak and slothful it might do to
remain in the older communities, to reap in the long-tilled fields, but
for the strong, for the unattached, for the enterprising, this unknown,