Mrs. Sherman and children arrived out in November, and we spent the winter very comfortably in the house of Thomas Ewing, Jr., on the corner of Third and Pottawottamie Streets.  On the 1st of January, 1859, Daniel McCook, Esq., was admitted to membership in our firm, which became Sherman, Ewing & McCook.  Our business continued to grow, but, as the income hardly sufficed for three such expensive personages, I continued to look about for something more certain and profitable, and during that spring undertook for the Hon. Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, to open a farm on a large tract of land he owned on Indian Creek, forty miles west of Leavenworth, for the benefit of his grand-nephew, Henry Clark, and his grand-niece, Mrs. Walker.  These arrived out in the spring, by which time I had caused to be erected a small frame dwelling-house, a barn, and fencing for a hundred acres.  This helped to pass away time, but afforded little profit; and on the 11th of June, 1859, I wrote to Major D. C. Buel, assistant adjutant-general, on duty in the War Department with Secretary of War Floyd, inquiring if there was a vacancy among the army paymasters, or any thing in his line that I could obtain.  He replied promptly, and sent me the printed programme for a military college about to be organized in Louisiana, and advised me to apply for the superintendent’s place, saying that General G. Mason Graham, the half-brother of my old commanding-general, R. B. Mason, was very influential in this matter, and would doubtless befriend me on account of the relations that had existed between General Mason and myself in California.  Accordingly, I addressed a letter of application to the Hon. R. C. Wickliffe, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, asking the answer to be sent to me at Lancaster, Ohio, where I proposed to leave my family.  But, before leaving this branch of the subject, I must explain a little matter of which I have seen an account in print, complimentary or otherwise of the firm of Sherman, Ewing & McCook, more especially of the senior partner.

One day, as I sat in our office, an Irishman came in and said he had a case and wanted a lawyer.  I asked him to sit down and give me the points of his case, all the other members of the firm being out.  Our client stated that he had rented a lot of an Irish landlord for five dollars a month; that he had erected thereon a small frame shanty, which was occupied by his family; that he had, paid his rent regularly up to a recent period, but to his house he had appended a shed which extended over a part of an adjoining vacant lot belonging to the same landlord, for which he was charged two and a half dollars a month, which he refused to pay.  The consequence was, that his landlord had for a few months declined even his five dollars monthly rent until the arrears amounted to about seventeen dollars, for which he was sued.  I told him we would undertake his case, of which I took notes, and a fee of five dollars in advance, and in due order I placed the notes in the hands of McCook, and thought no more of it.