I do not mean to give you an account of my struggles that winter to obtain a foothold in the law.  The time was a heyday for young barristers, and troubles in those early days grew as plentifully in Kentucky as corn.  In short, I got a practice, for Colonel Clark was here to help me, and, thanks to the men who had gone to Kaskaskia and Vincennes, I had a fairly large acquaintance in Kentucky.  I hired rooms behind Mr. Crede’s store, which was famed for the glass windows which had been fetched all the way from Philadelphia.  Mr. Crede was the embodiment of the enterprising spirit of the place, and often of an evening he called me in to see the new fashionable things his barges had brought down the Ohio.  The next day certain young sparks would drop into my room to waylay the belles as they came to pick a costume to be worn at Mr. Nickle’s dancing school, or at the ball at Fort Finney.

The winter slipped away, and one cool evening in May there came a negro to my room with a note from Colonel Clark, bidding me sup with him at the tavern and meet a celebrity.

I put on my best blue clothes that I had brought with me from Richmond, and repaired expectantly to the tavern about eight of the clock, pushed through the curious crowd outside, and entered the big room where the company was fast assembling.  Against the red blaze in the great chimney-place I spied the figure of Colonel Clark, more portly than of yore, and beside him stood a gentleman who could be no other than General Wilkinson.

He was a man to fill the eye, handsome of face, symmetrical of figure, easy of manner, and he wore a suit of bottle-green that became him admirably.  In short, so fascinated and absorbed was I in watching him as he greeted this man and the other that I started as though something had pricked me when I heard my name called by Colonel Clark.

“Come here, Davy,” he cried across the room, and I came and stood abashed before the hero.  “General, allow me to present to you the drummer boy of Kaskaskia and Vincennes, Mr. David Ritchie.”

“I hear that you drummed them to victory through a very hell of torture, Mr. Ritchie,” said the General.  “It is an honor to grasp the hand of one who did such service at such a tender age.”

General Wilkinson availed himself of that honor, and encompassed me with a smile so benignant, so winning in its candor, that I could only mutter my acknowledgment, and Colonel Clark must needs apologize, laughing, for my youth and timidity.

“Mr. Ritchie is not good at speeches, General,” said he, “but I make no doubt he will drink a bumper to your health before we sit down.  Gentlemen,” he cried, filling his glass from a bottle on the table, “a toast to General Wilkinson, emancipator and saviour of Kentucky!”