in an active and thriving town near one of the Great Lakes. The air and
bustle and smack of life about the place attracted me, and I rented an
office and continued to read law, from force of habit, I suppose. My
experience in the service of one of the most prominent of New York
lawyers stood me in good stead, and gradually, in addition to a
heterogeneous business of mines and lumber, I began to pick up a few
clients. But in all probability I should be still pegging away at mines
and lumber, and drawing up occasional leases and contracts, had it not
been for Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, of Philadelphia. Although it has
been specifically written that promotion to a young man comes neither
from the East nor the West, nor yet from the South, Mr. Cooke arrived
from the East, and in the nick of time for me.

I was indebted to Farrar for Mr. Cooke's acquaintance, and this
obligation I have since in vain endeavored to repay. Farrar's profession
was forestry: a graduate of an eastern college, he had gone abroad to
study, and had roughed it with the skilled woodsmen of the Black Forest.
Mr. Cooke, whom he represented, had large tracts of land in these parts,
and Farrar likewise received an income from the state, whose legislature
had at last opened its eyes to the timber depredations and had begun to
buy up reserves. We had rooms in the same Elizabethan building at the
corner of Main and Superior streets, but it was more than a year before I
got farther than a nod with him. Farrar's nod in itself was a repulsion,
and once you had seen it you mentally scored him from the list of your
possible friends. Besides this freezing exterior he possessed a cutting
and cynical tongue, and had but little confidence in the human race.
These qualities did not tend to render him popular in a Western town,
if indeed they would have recommended him anywhere, and I confess to have
thought him a surly enough fellow, being guided by general opinion and
superficial observation. Afterwards the town got to know him, and if it