This was a good year for the district. As it was to be the last, I determined to make the best record possible for my successor, to duplicate or excel. To succeed meant to go all the time. Distance, bad weather, dangerous roads, swollen streams, or any other circumstances were seldom allowed to get in the way. When Lincoln was asked if he thought the war would close during his administration, he replied, “I don’t know, sir, I don’t know.” “What, then, is your purpose?” was further asked, to which the characteristic answer was given, “Peg away, sir, peg away.” It is this, everlasting “pegging away”—forcing one’s way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles—that wins, not only in West Virginia, but everywhere else. Buxton wrote: “The longer I live the more deeply I am convinced that that which makes the difference between one man and another—between the weak and powerful, the great and insignificant—is _energy_, invincible determination, a purpose once formed, and then victory or death.” I quote Buxton’s words because they are gold, and have in them the ring of triumph. [Illustration: TRAVELING A DISTRICT] The year brought its usual harvest of incidents—some serious, others laughable and amusing. It is well to have a streak of fun occasionally flash across our pathway to enliven a journey, or some task to which we have set our hands. One bleak Monday morning in December I was riding along a high ridge in Wetzel County on my way home from a quarterly just held in that region. To my right a few rods I observed a young man husking corn. He was evidently working his best to keep warm, and, of course, not in a very good condition to be fooled with by a stranger; but I thought I must say something, and run the risk of an explosion. Reining up my horse and getting his attention, I called to him, “Go it; that’s the way I got my start.” “Yes,” he said, with lightning speed, “and a thunderin’ start you got,” and then made the fodder rattle so that if I had replied he could not have heard me. To be honest, I had not the disposition to talk back, for nothing suggested itself at the moment as an appropriate response; but for the next mile I laughed over the episode and considered myself fortunate that nothing more serious had happened.