CHAPTER VII

Sarah and Zoe followed me to the door the morning I went to see Mr. Brooks.  Cholera had descended upon the community and they begged me to go to Mr. Brooks’ office and return at once, and not to be in the sun any more than was necessary.  I had no fear.  Having come from so serious an illness I did not feel that another malady would attack me soon.  As I walked along I could see that the boundless prairie was around me.  I inhaled the spaciousness of the scene.  I could see the deep woods which stood beyond the rich prairies of tall and heavy grass.  The town was built roughly of hewn logs.  It was like a camp of hastily constructed shacks.  But a college had already been founded.  It had two buildings, one of logs and one of brick.  I looked back to see that the Spurgeon house was substantially built, with care and taste....  Mr. Brooks’ office was in one of the log structures about the square.  One entered it from the street.  I counted the signs of eleven lawyers on my way.  The tavern where I had stayed, except for Douglas and Miss Spurgeon, was a most uninviting place.

Mr. Brooks sat behind a rude table.  Back of him on a wall were a portrait of Washington and a map of Illinois.  On the table there was a law book of some sort.  Altogether there were three chairs in the room.  The floor was made of puncheon boards, and was bare.  Flies buzzed in the air and at the rude windows.  I felt strong when I left the house.  Now I was not sure how long I should feel so.  Mr. Brooks invited me to have a seat; and after a few words about the heat and the cholera he began to tell me stories of the people and the country.  “Some years ago,” he said, “a man came to this country, I mean over around the river country which you saw when you took the steamboat at Bath.  He didn’t have anything, but he was ambitious to be rich.  How could he do it?  Well, you can work and buy land with your savings, and land here under the Homestead Act has been $1.25 an acre since 1820; still that may not put you ahead very fast.  And if you’re ambitious you want to get rich quick.  That’s the way every one here feels who is bent on getting rich.  Money is not as plentiful as land; and if land is only $1.25 an acre it takes $800 to get a section.  That’s a lot of money to a man who has nothing.  This land around here is rich as the valley of the Nile.  It is six feet or more of black fertility.  I’ll bet that some say it will be worth $50 an acre.”

I began to wonder why these Americans talk so much.  I had observed it everywhere.  Here I was come on a matter of business, of my father’s estate; and the lawyer with whom I was forced to deal was talking to me interminably of things that had nothing to do with it.  But I was young and strange, and not very strong; and it did not occur to me to show impatience with him.  And so he went on.