by a tacit consent of nearly every one were left for my visits. But Peck, who now professed a great friendship for me, must take to coming on precisely the evenings I had selected for my calls. He never wore a collar that fitted him, and his boots were never blacked. Miss Lilian used to laugh at him and call him "the burr"--indeed, so much that I more than once told her, that while I was not an admirer of Peck myself, I thought the fact that he was really in love with her ought to secure him immunity from her sarcasm. We had quite a stiff quarrel over the matter, and I told her what our old law professor had said of Peck. I had rather thought that, possibly, Mr. Poole, knowing of the growing relation of intimacy between myself and his daughter, would throw a little of his law business my way; but he never did. He did, in fact, once consult me at his own house about some extensive interests that he owned and represented together in a railway in a Western city; but though I took the trouble to hunt up the matter and send him a brief on the point carefully prepared, he did not employ me, and evidently considered that I had acted only as a friend. It was in this investigation that I first heard of the name Argand and also of the P. D. and B. D. R.R. Co. I heard long afterward that he said I had too many interests to suit him; that he wanted a lawyer to give him all his intellect, and not squander it on politics, literature, sport, and he did not know what besides. This was a dig at my rising aspirations in each of these fields. For I used to write now regularly for the newspapers, and had one or two articles accepted by a leading monthly magazine--a success on which even Peck congratulated me, though he said that, as for him, he preferred the law to any other entertainment. My newspaper work attracted sufficient attention to inspire me with the idea of running for Congress, and I began to set my traps and lay my triggers for that. Success appeared to wait for me, and my beginning was "meteoric." Meteoric beginnings are fatal. The meteor soon fades into outer darkness--the outer darkness of the infinite abyss. I took it for success and presumed accordingly, and finally I came down. I played my game too carelessly. I began to speculate--just a little at first; but more largely after awhile. There I appeared to find my proper field; for I made money almost immediately, and I spent it freely, and, after I had made a few thousands, I was regarded with respect by my little circle.