lace in the Middlebury workshop for any other place
whatsoever. As it was, he left it because he was not strong enough for
that sort of work.

The following year he pursued his studies at the academy of Brandon.
Then his mother married again, and he went with her to the home of his
stepfather, Gehazi Granger, Esquire, near Canandaigua, New York, and
finished his schooling at the Canandaigua Academy, which appears to have
been an excellent one. Meanwhile, he also read law, and showed great
proficiency both in his classical and his legal studies. Not much is on
record concerning his schoolboy life. It is known, however, that he had
a way of making his fellows like him, so that they of their own accord
put him forward, and that he had a lively interest in politics. It is
said that even so early as the campaign of 1828, when he was but
fifteen, he organized a band of his playmates to make war on the "coffin
handbills" wherewith the Adams men sought to besmirch the military fame
of General Jackson, already become his hero. At Canandaigua, four years
later, he espoused the same cause in debating clubs, and won an
ascendency among his fellows by his readiness and the extent of his
information. In the life of another man, these boyish performances
might be set down merely as signs of promise; but Douglas was so soon
immersed in real politics, and rose to distinction with such astounding
swiftness, that his performances as a schoolboy may well be accounted
the actual beginning, and not merely a premonition, of his career. He
was only twenty, when, in June, 1833, he set forth to enter upon it.

Save that he was going West, he does not seem to have had any
destination clearly in mind. He carried letters to certain persons in
Cleveland, and stopped there to see them, and so made the acquaintance
of Sherlock J. Andrews, a leading lawyer of the town, who persuaded him
to remain and read law in his office until a year should elapse and he
could be admitted to the Ohio bar. However, in less than a week he fell
ill of a fever which did not leave him until the expense of it had
well-nigh emptied his slender purse. His physicians, fearing he was too
slight and delicate for Western hardships, urged him to go back to
Canandaigua, but when he left Cleveland he again turned westward,
resolved in his own mind never to go back without the evidences of
success in his life. It is doubtful if among all the thousands who in
those days were constan