You see, when Charley had finished his law-studies, his father and mother were dead. He never had any brothers or sisters. One or two thousand dollars was his fortune. Being a young man—now some twenty-five—of fine appearance, and talents, and manners, he attracted the attention of Mr. Nelson, a keen and rich lawyer in the village, and in a few weeks he was settled in his office as a junior partner. For some six months Nelson seemed wonderfully attached to Charley—continually spoke of him with the loudest praise—over-rated him, in fact. At the close of this period, however, he suddenly took just as violent a set against Bell as he had before for him. Nobody ever knew the reason of this. I don’t think Nelson himself did. The truth is, the elder partner was a singular man. He always dressed neatly in black—was rather thin, with a stooping shoulder, a retreating forehead, a quick way of talking, and a rapid step. He was excessively hospitable and generous, more for the sake of being a sort of protector and superior of the guest than any thing else. Self-will was _the_ trait of his character. But I am writing about Charley, and have got no time to paint this Nelson. Enough to say that he took as vehement a dislike to Bell as he before had a liking. He ridiculed and opposed and thwarted him with an astonishing bitterness. Bell, at first, was staggered with astonishment—then cut to the very soul with such unkindness from the last man on earth from whom he expected it. But it did him great good. It corrected his blind confidence in every man completely, and gave him a quiet watchfulness of men in all his dealings with them, which was of immense benefit to him. It destroyed in an instant all his false and colored ideas of things. The faults of his character which Nelson pointed out and ridiculed, and made the ostensible cause of his alienation, were forever corrected—just as a wart is burnt off by corrosive sublimate. Nelson’s extravagant depreciation of him after such extravagant praise of him, gave him, in one word, an impulse to prove himself unworthy that depreciation and more than worthy the former praise, which did more for him than if his senior partner had given him years of the most careful instruction and countenance. Besides, it threw him suddenly on himself—made an independent man of him forever. Just what that chest-exercise did for his lungs, that Dora affair did for his heart, this Nelson matter did for his will—it deepened and broadened and strengthened it to an unusual degree—it did very much toward making him a Senator.