Returning we went past Reverdy’s farm.  But he had finished his work and gone to town.  Accordingly we speeded up.  When I arrived home I found Reverdy already there.  But he would not leave the tavern.  He gave no reason in particular.  He said he was as safe there as anywhere; and it was more convenient for him.

But there was much doing.  Sarah and Zoe were mixing the ingredients of a cake.  A turkey was roasting; we were going to have a guest for supper.  Douglas, the law student, the new school teacher, was coming; and all was delighted expectation.  “For,” said Mrs. Spurgeon, “I reckon we ain’t never had such a young feller before around these parts.  Talk!  You never heard such talk.  It flows just like the water down hill.  And there never was a friendlier soul.  I never thought they raised such people up in Yankeeland as him.  You can bet he’ll make his mark.  He’ll be a judge before he’s ten years older; and they do well to get him here.  And what I say is:  where did he get his eddication?  He is an orphan too, like you, James ... raised by an uncle so far as he had a raisin’.  But the uncle fooled him.  He promised him an eddication, and then went back on it.  And what does young Douglas do?  He busts away.  He gets awful mad and comes west to make his fortune.  Make a young feller mad, hurt him good and plenty, and if he has the right stuff you make a man of him.  I’ve seen it over and over.  When a young feller’s mad and disappointed, if he’s got the right stuff in him, he gets more energy, like a kettle blown off.  They do, unless they sulk.  Now there’s other types.  There was your poppy; he warn’t mad and he didn’t sulk exactly, and yet there was somethin’.  He seemed to simmer and stew a little.  But he left five thousand acres of land.  Maybe he was one of these here big speculators like as is all over Illinois now, that has some kind of a different secret, and makes a big success some other way.  You can never tell.  But you see when Douglas came here he landed from Alton down here at Winchester and went right to work makin’ a few dollars at a auction where he was a appraiser.  And he worked at his trade too.  For he’s a cabinet maker.  Yes, sir, he has a trade.  With all the books he’s read he has a trade.  And now he’s up here to look over the ground; for they say he’s comin’ here next spring to practice law, and even then he’ll be only twenty-one.”

Surely, this was a land of haste, of easy expedients.  I did not know a great deal about the legal education of an English lawyer; but enough to appreciate the difference between the slow and disciplined training there and the rapid and loose preparation which I heard Mrs. Spurgeon describe with so much pride.  I went into the corner of the room to write a letter to my grandmother.

CHAPTER X

This is the letter that I wrote: