seen it over and over. When a young feller's mad and disappointed, if
he's got the right stuff in him, he gets more energy, like a kettle
blown off. They do, unless they sulk. Now there's other types. There was
your poppy; he warn't mad and he didn't sulk exactly, and yet there was
somethin'. He seemed to simmer and stew a little. But he left five
thousand acres of land. Maybe he was one of these here big speculators
like as is all over Illinois now, that has some kind of a different
secret, and makes a big success some other way. You can never tell. But
you see when Douglas came here he landed from Alton down here at
Winchester and went right to work makin' a few dollars at a auction
where he was a appraiser. And he worked at his trade too. For he's a
cabinet maker. Yes, sir, he has a trade. With all the books he's read he
has a trade. And now he's up here to look over the ground; for they say
he's comin' here next spring to practice law, and even then he'll be
only twenty-one."

Surely, this was a land of haste, of easy expedients. I did not know a
great deal about the legal education of an English lawyer; but enough to
appreciate the difference between the slow and disciplined training
there and the rapid and loose preparation which I heard Mrs. Spurgeon
describe with so much pride. I went into the corner of the room to write
a letter to my grandmother.




CHAPTER X


This is the letter that I wrote: