Equipped as I was the natural course for me to pursue seemed to be to adopt for a time the work of teaching, not that I inclined toward it, but because it afforded opportunity to acquire a little capital which might enable me to take up a profession. I secured a school without much difficulty in a thriving southwestern town, and at the end of a course of three years had saved several hundred dollars. With the money thus obtained, I graduated at a famous law school, after which I studied diligently for a year in the office of a prominent attorney. I was clerk, porter, office boy, everything about the office, but the distinguished lawyer did me the honor, at the end of the year, to say that I was the most thorough student he had ever assisted and prophesied flatteringly as to my future. I was admitted to the bar with compliments from the examining judges as to my knowledge of the law. I at once established an office in a town of about two thousand people, where the outlook seemed exceptionally promising. I was entirely unknown in the little city, but for two years I prospered beyond my expectations. I knew the law and, as the event showed, I was strong with juries, possessing the power of interesting and winning the confidence of men to an exceptional degree. I won a number of cases, some of them important ones. I became known in the town and in the surrounding district as a public speaker of force and eloquence. Upon the lecture platform or political rostrum I felt as potent and at ease as in the court room. My future seemed assured. I found friends among the best people, my income was more than sufficient for my needs; in my rooms I was accumulating books of the world's literature. My law library was the best in the county. In all things I was flourishing and the world looked bright to me. One day there came to the town wherein I had established myself a young man who had been in college with me. I was glad to see him and did what I could for him during his stay, though we were unlike in temperament and tastes, and his associates and friends had all been different from mine. He soon left the place, and, not long after, I noticed a surprising change in the manner of the people toward me. I no longer received invitations to dinner nor to social gatherings. No reason was given me for the freezing indifference with which I was treated by my former friends. What was, from one point of view, a matter of as much importance, my business began to drop off; men who had placed their legal affairs in my hands no longer sought me for advice and only an occasional petty case in some justice's court came to afford me a livelihood. After a vain struggle with these intolerable conditions I gave up. I closed my office and left the city. It was early in June, that year when I left the place where I had hoped to become a lifelong resident and useful citizen.