The neighbors said that I had gone insane, and a few days afterward, when I met a woman in the road, she jerked her old mare in an effort to get away, and piteously begged me not to hurt her. I made no further attempt to get into "company," and thus, forced back upon myself, I began to form the habits of a student; and to aid me in my determination to study law, I decided to teach school. So, when I was almost grown--or, rather, about twenty-three years old, for I appeared to keep on growing--I went over into another neighborhood and took up a school. And they called me "Lazy Bill." I couldn't understand why, for I am sure that I attended to my duties, that I played town ball with the boys, that I even cut wood all day one Saturday; but confound them, they called me lazy. I spoke to one of the trustees; I called his attention to the fact that I worked hard, and he replied that the hardest working man he had ever seen was a lazy fellow who worked merely as a "blind." To sleep after the sun rises is a great crime in the country, and sometimes I sat up so late with my books that I had to be called twice for breakfast. And no amount of work could have offset this ignominy. I taught school during three years, and found at the end of that time that I was no nearer a lawyer's office. Once I called on an old judge, the leading lawyer in a neighboring village, and told him that if he would take me I would work for my clothes, and the humorous old rascal, surveying me, replied: "I have not contemplated the starting of a woolen mill. Why don't you go to work?" he asked. I told him that I was at work, that I taught school, but that I wanted to be a lawyer. He laughed and said that teaching school was not work--declared it to be the refuge of the lazy and the shiftless. I then ventured to remark that the South would continue to be backward as long as the educator was put down as a piece of worthless rubbish. I went away, and a few days later one of the trustees called on me and said that I had declared their children to be ignorant rubbish, and that therefore they wanted my services no longer. I returned home. My brothers were gone, and my parents were in feeble health. My father died within a year, and soon my mother followed him. The farm was poor and was mortgaged, and empty-handed I turned away. I heard that a school teacher was wanted up in North Carolina, near the Tennessee line, and I decided to apply for the place. I walked to the railway station, twenty miles distant. I have said that I went away empty-handed. I did not; I carried a trunk, light with clothes and heavy with books. I had put my trunk on the railway platform and was striding up and down when I saw two men, well-dressed, rich-looking, standing near. This amounted to nothing, and I would not mention it but for the fact that it was at this moment that I received my first encouragement. One of the men, speaking to his companion, remarked: "Devilish fine-looking fellow.