with local politicians, learning not a little about the arts and
devices by which the Albany Regency controlled the Democratic
organization in the State. In this school of practical politics he was
beyond a peradventure an apt pupil.

A characteristic story is told of Douglass during these school days at
Canandaigua.[15] A youngster who occupied a particularly desirable
seat at table had been ousted by another lad, who claimed a better
right to the place. Some one suggested that the claimants should have
the case argued by counsel before a board of arbitration. The
dispossessed boy lost his case, because of the superior skill with
which Douglass presented the claims of his client. "It was the first
assertion of the doctrine of squatter sovereignty," said the defeated
claimant, recalling the incident years afterward, when both he and
Douglas were in politics.

Douglass was now maturing rapidly. His ideals were clearer; his native
tastes more pronounced. It is not improbable that already he looked
forward to politics as a career. At all events he took the proximate
step toward that goal by beginning the study of law in the office of
local attorneys, at the same time continuing his studies begun in the
academy. What marked him off from his comrades even at this period was
his lively acquisitiveness. He seemed to learn quite as much by
indirection as by persevering application to books.[16]

In the spring of 1833, the same unrest that sent the first Douglass
across the sea to the new world, seized the young man. Against the
remonstrances of his mother and his relatives, he started for the
great West which then spelled opportunity to so many young men. He was
only twenty years old, and he had not yet finished his academic
course; but with the impatience of ambition he was reluctant to spend
four more years in study before he could gain admission to the bar. In
the newer States of the West conditions were easier. Moreover, he was
no longer willing to be a burden to his mother, whose resources were
limited. And so, with purposes only half formed and with only enough
money for his immediate needs, he began, not so much a journey, as a
drift in a westerly direction, for he had no particular destination in
view.[17]

After a short stay in Buffalo and a visit to Niagara Falls and the
battle ground of Chippewa, the boy took a steamboat to Cleveland,
where happily he found a friend in Sherlock J. Andrews, Esquire, a
successful