When Joe Brown was twenty years old, his father allowed him to seek an education. All he could do for the industrious and ambitious boy was to give him his blessing and the yoke of steers with which he had been plowing. With these young Brown returned to South Carolina and entered an academy in Anderson district He gave the steers for eight months' board, and went into debt for the tuition fee. In the fall of 1841 he returned to Georgia and taught school for three months, and with the money he received for this he paid for the schooling he had gone in debt for. He returned to the Carolina academy in 1842, and went into debt not only for his schooling, but for his board. His patience and his untiring industry enabled him to make such rapid progress that within two years he had fitted himself to enter an advanced class in college. But the lack of means prevented him from entering college. Instead he returned to Georgia and opened a school at Canton, Cherokee County. He opened this school with six pupils, and the number rapidly increased to sixty, so that he was able in a short time to settle the debts he had made in Carolina. He taught school all day, and at night and on Saturdays devoted himself to the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1845, and was at once successful. He made no pretense of oratory; but his simple and unpretending style, his homely and direct way of putting a case, and his faculty of applying the test of common sense to all questions, were as successful with juries as they afterwards proved to be with the people; and before the people he was irresistible. [Illustration: Joe Brown and his Steers 270] But he was not yet through with his studies. A friend advanced him the money necessary to enter the Law School of Yale; and there, from October, 1845, to June, 1846, when he graduated, he took the lead in all his classes, and had time to attend lectures in other departments of the college. He returned home, began active practice, and was soon prosperous. He became a State senator, and was afterwards made a judge of the superior courts.