l.
When I arrived in Boston I set myself to thinking how best I could
contrive to enjoy life and at the same time to increase my means.
I possessed sufficient capital, and was able and ready to embark in
whatever promised the best returns with the smallest personal risks. I
settled myself in a suburb, paid off a few pressing claims, and began to
reflect with my ordinary sagacity.

We were now in the midst of a most absurd war with the South, and it was
becoming difficult to escape the net of conscription. It might be wise
to think of this in time. Europe seemed a desirable residence, but
I needed more money to make this agreeable, and an investment for my
brains was what I wanted most. Many schemes presented themselves
as worthy the application of industry and talent, but none of them
altogether suited my case. I thought at times of traveling as
a physiological lecturer, combining with it the business of a
practitioner: scare the audience at night with an enumeration of
symptoms which belong to ten out of every dozen healthy people, and
then doctor such of them as are gulls enough to consult me next day.
The bigger the fright the better the pay. I was a little timid, however,
about facing large audiences, as a man will be naturally if he has lived
a life of adventure, so that upon due consideration I gave up the idea
altogether.

The patent medicine business also looked well enough, but it is somewhat
overdone at all times, and requires a heavy outlay, with the probable
result of ill success. Indeed, I believe one hundred quack remedies fail
for one that succeeds, and millions must have been wasted in placards,
bills, and advertisements, which never returned half their value to the
speculator. I think I shall some day beguile my time with writing an
account of the principal quack remedies which have met with success.
They are few in number, after all, as any one must know who recalls the
countless pills and tonics which are puffed awhile on the fences, and
disappear, to be heard of no more.

Lastly, I inclined for a while to undertake a private insane asylum,
which appeared to me to offer facilities for money-making, as to which,
however, I may have been deceived by the writings of certain popular
novelists. I went so far, I may say, as actually to visit Concord for
the purpose of finding a pleasant locality and a suitable atmosphere.
Upon reflection I abandoned my plans, as involving too much personal
labor to suit