tly faring westward, from New England towns and
the parishes of Virginia and the Carolinas, there ever was a youth more
resolutely and boldly addressed to opportunity than he. Poor, broken in
health, almost diminutive in physical stature, and quite unknown, he
made his way first to Cincinnati, then to Louisville, then to St. Louis,
in search of work. Coming almost to the end of his resources, he
reasoned that it would be best for him to seek some country town, where
his expenses would be slight; and guided merely by a book of travel he
had read he fixed on a town which, as it happened, bore the name of his
political patron saint. In November, 1833, being now twenty years and
six months old, he arrived at Jacksonville, Illinois, with a sum total
of thirty-seven cents in his pocket. The glimpses we get of him during
his wanderings, from the recollections of certain men with whom he made
acquaintance in stages and on river steamboats, make a curious and
striking picture of American character. The feverish, high-strung boy
was never dismayed and never a dreamer, but always confident,
purposeful, good-humored.

He found no work at Jacksonville, and walked to Winchester, sixteen
miles to the southwestward, where he hoped to get work as a teacher. The
next morning, seeing a crowd assembled in the public square of the
village, he pushed his way to the centre and learned that there was to
be an auction of the wares of a merchant who had recently died. The
auctioneer was in need of a clerk to keep the record of the sales, and
the place was offered to the young stranger. He took it, served three
days, earned six dollars, made acquaintance with the farmers gathered
for the sale, and got a chance in the talk about politics to display
those qualities which he never failed to display when opportunity
offered--the utmost readiness in debate, good-natured courtesy, and keen
political instinct. A school was arranged for him, and within a week he
had forty pupils entered for three months. A lawyer of the place
befriended him with the loan of some books, and he gave his evenings to
law and politics. When the three months were ended, he went back to
Jacksonville and opened an office. March 4, 1834, he was licensed to
practice, and from that time he rose faster than any man in Illinois, if
not in the whole country, notwithstanding that he rose on the lines
along which many and many another young American was struggling toward
prominence, and