Two weeks after our arrival, Kingsley took his departure for Texas, on a visit. He proposed to be absent two months. His object, as he had described it before, in some pleasant exaggerations, was to select some favorable spots for purchase, which should combine as nearly as possible the three prime requisites of salubrity, fertility, and beauty. His object was to speculate; “and this was to be done,” he said, “at an early hour of the day.” “The Spanish proverb,” he was wont to say, “which regulates the eating of oranges, is not a bad rule to govern a man in making his speculations. Speculations (oranges) are gold at morning, silver at noon, and lead at night. It is your wise man,” he added, “who buys and sells early; your merely sensible man who does so at midday; while your dunce, waiting for an increased appetite at evening, swallows nothing but lead.” I was in some respects a very fortunate man. If I had been a wise one! It has been seen that I was singularly successful in business at my first beginning in my native city. I had not been long in the town of M--, before I began to congratulate myself on the prospect of like fortune attending me there. The affairs of Kingsley brought me into contact with several men of business. My letters of introduction made me acquainted with many more; not simply of the town, but of the neighboring country. My ardency of temper was particularly suited to a frank, confiding people, such as are most of the southwestern men; and one or two accidental circumstances yielded me professional occupation long before I expected to find it. I had occasion to appear in court at an early day, and succeeded in making a favorable impression upon my hearers. To be a good speaker, in the south and southwest, is to be everything. Eloquence implies wisdom--at least all the wisdom which is supposed to be necessary in making lawyers and law-makers--a precious small modicum of a material by no means precious. I was supposed to have the gift of the gab in moderate perfection, and my hearers were indulgent. My name obtained circulation, and, in a short time, I discovered that, in a professional as well as personal point of view, I had no reason to regret the change of residence which I had made. Business began to flow in upon me. Applications reached me from adjoining counties, and though my fees, like the cases which I was employed in, were of moderate amount, they promised to be frequent, while my clients generally were very substantial persons.