"So you shall," he replied. "There is a nice little farm at some fifteen miles distant. I will buy it for you." I had never yet resided under what Scripture calls "the shadow of my own vine and fig-tree." The idea struck me in a favorable light, and I cordially accepted his offer, although somewhat doubting my capacity in an agricultural line. However, the die was cast, and in a few weeks I had settled down in the original occupation of our common parent, having at the same time become a married man. It must be admitted that from the very start I found wedlock infinitely more agreeable than tilling the soil. My previous almost nomadic style of existence had to a great measure incapacitated me for this wearisomely primitive style of life. It was of no use trying to relish it. Luckily, there are all sorts of temperaments in this world, or what would humanity do for wheat, corn, and garden-stuff. My nature was decidedly not adapted to raising them. My wife saw my utter incapability as a farmer. She was a good little soul, and frequently condoled with me on it. This was the very worst thing, possibly, that she could have done. It added edge to my disgust with it. Night after night, when the day's work was over, were spent by me in querulously grumbling, and by her in consoling my discontent at my condition in life. At length the farming season ended, and then my detestation of agriculture was doomed to be inconceivably heightened. While I had out-of-door occupation, I could stand its regular monotony. Without it, what was there for me to do? I could but wander round the yard, and look at my pigs, fodder my cattle, take a stroll to the next farm, some three miles away, return to my little wife, expect her to console me, and then retire to bed, with the expectation of awaking to another day of the same humdrum existence. My life had a necessity for positive activity. The good little soul to whom I was married saw this; possibly too late. However this was, it came about that, with her full consent, although not without many tears on her part, and a considerable quantity of gloomy sorrow on mine, I left her at home, and struck out once more into the world. It would be useless to narrate every incident of this winter, but in the spring of 1855 I brought up at St. Joseph, Missouri.