After leaving the university, he studied for the bar, and became connected with the press; then went out to India and edited a paper at Lahore. After a year or two he returned to England. Finding it somewhat difficult to succeed in the old country, by the advice of an old college friend, who had settled in Louisiana, he went out to seek his fortune there. Before long he obtained a situation as secretary to a wealthy planter, and for a time lived in happiness and ease. But the vicissitudes of his career had as yet only commenced. The civil war between the Northern and Southern States broke out, and the peaceful Mr. O’B. was startled out of his dream of rest and safety by the bustle and din of warlike preparations. Although sufficiently alarmed at the prospect of hostilities, he yet flattered himself that he would be considered a non-combatant. One day, however, his friend the planter came up to him in a great state of delight and excitement, and warmly shaking him by the hand, said, “My dear O’B., allow me to congratulate you most heartily on the compliment which has been paid you; you have been unanimously elected Captain of the Home Guard.” The newly-elected captain was horror-struck--visions of sharp-pointed bayonets directed against his abdomen, and keen swords flashing in descent upon his cranium, rose before his mental eye; the roar of cannon and musketry, and the whistle of bullets, seemed already to sound in his affrighted ears; wounds, agony, and death to stare him in the face. Stammering out thanks, less warm than seemed appropriate to the warlike Southerner, he stole away from his disappointed friend, and secretly made preparations for escape. That night he took what little money he had in hand, and, leaving all the rest of his property behind, fled from the honour proposed for him. He succeeded in getting across the lines into the Northern States, and there obtained an appointment as Classical Professor at one of the colleges. This institution was, however, supported by voluntary subscriptions, which failed under the pressure of the war, the staff was reduced, and Mr. O’B. again cast adrift. He next anchored for a short time near St. Paul, in Minnesota, and thence proceeded to Fort Garry, with the intention of establishing a school in the Red River Settlement. Classics were, however, at a discount amongst the half-breeds, and consequently Mr. O’B.’s merits as a pedagogue were not properly appreciated by the colonists. The projected academy utterly failed, and after spending some time in Red River, at a dead lock, he was fitted out by the kindness of Archdeacon Cockran, the veteran missionary of this country, with necessaries for a journey across the mountains, in search of a more congenial community on the Pacific coast.