At last, I began teaching school, and working my way to a better education than our local standard accepted as either useful or necessary, and Jim and I drifted apart. He had always kept up a voluminous correspondence with that class of advertisers whose black-letter "Agents Wanted" is so attractive to the farmer-boy; and he was usually agent for some of their wares. Finally, I heard of him as a canvasser for a book sold by subscription,--a "Veterinarians' Guide," I believe it was,--and report said that he was "making money." Again I learned that he had established a publishing business of some kind; and, later, that reverses had forced him to discontinue it,--the old farmer who told me said he had "failed up." Then I heard no more of him until that night of the convention, when I had the adventure with the Empress and Sir John, all unknown to them; and Jim made the ineffectual attempt to find me. His family had left the old neighborhood, and so had mine; and the chances of our ever meeting seemed very slight. In fact it was some years later and after many of the brave dreams of the youthful publicist had passed away, that I casually stumbled upon him in the smoking-room of a parlor-car, coming out of Chicago. I did not know him at first. He came forward, and, extending his hand, said, "How are you, Al?" and paused, holding the hand I gave him, evidently expecting to enjoy a period of perplexity on my part. But with one good look in his eyes I knew him. I made him sit down by me, and for half an hour we were too much engrossed in reminiscences to ask after such small matters as business, residence, and general welfare. "Where all have you been, Jim, and what have you been doing, since you followed off the 'Veterinarians' Guide,' and I lost you?" I inquired at last. "I've been everywhere, and I've done everything, almost," said he. "Put it in the 'negative case,' and my history'll be briefer." "I should regard organizing a flambeau brigade," said I, "as about the last thing you would engage in." "Ah!" he replied, "His Whiskers at the hotel told you I called that time, did he? Well, I didn't think he had the sense. And I doubted the memory on your part, and I wasn't at all sure you were the real Barslow. But about the flambeaux. The fact is, I had some stock in the flambeau factory, and I was a rabid partisan of flambeaux. They seemed so patriotic, you know, so sort of ennobling, and so convincing, as to the merits of the tariff controversy!" It was the same old Jim, I thought. "We used to have a scheme," I remarked, "our favorite one, of occupying an island in the Pacific,--or was it somewhere in the vicinity of the Spanish Main--"