So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny.  He went to Frederick:  still the invisible finger pointed on.  At last there was but one more step.  He secured a seat in the stage going down the Frederick road to Washington.

Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far different prospects!  But this was his first visit.  It was at the close of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city.  The last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky.  The dreary twilight was setting in.  Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills.  The trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast.  Gloom was shutting down upon the capital.  The city wore a dismal and forbidding aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the extreme.  Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it descended the hills.  Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray, cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night.  Between this mud and that water what was there for him?  Yet here was his destination.

Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe also,—­his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of friends.  But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth.  Of all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul.  There was no one to dispense favors to him,—­to receive him with cheerful look and cordial grasp of the hand.  A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit, as the darkness settled upon the hills.  Here he was, alone and unknown,—­a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves into notice.  Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him!

But he was not disheartened.  From the depths of his spirit arose a hope, like a bubble from a deep spring.  That spring was FAITH.  There, in that dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence take hold of his.  And a prayer rose to his lips,—­a prayer of earnest supplication for guidance and support.  Was that prayer answered?

The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted streets.

“Where do you stop?” asked the driver.

“Set me down at a boarding-house, if you know of a good one.”  For Salmon could not afford to go to a hotel.

“What sort of a boarding-house?  I know of a good many.  Some ’s right smart,—­’ristocratic, and ’ristocratic prices.  Then there’s some good enough in every way, only not quite so smart,—­and with this advantage, you don’t have the smartness to pay for.”

“I prefer to go to a good house, where there are nice people, without too much smartness to be put into the bill.”

“I know jest the kind of place, I reckon!”—­and the driver whipped up his jaded horses.