om this number
he selected, courted, and espoused, some healthy, buxom girl, the
heiress of a considerable plantation or a quantity of "wild land." He
always sought these two requisites combined--for he was equally fond of
a fine person and handsome estate. Upon the land, he generally managed
to find an eligible town-site; and, being a perfect master of the art of
building cities on paper, and puffing them into celebrity, his sales of
town-lots usually brought him a competent fortune. As years rolled on,
his substance increased with the improvement of the country--the rougher
points of his character were gradually rubbed down--age and gray hairs
thickened upon his brow--honors, troops of friends, and numerous
children, gathered round him--and the close of his career found him
respected in life and lamented in death. His memory is a monument of
what honesty and industry, even without worldly advantages, may always
accomplish.

[NOTE.--A friend expresses a doubt whether I have not made the
foregoing portrait too hard-featured for historical accuracy; and,
by way of fortifying his opinion, points to illustrious examples of
men who have taught schools in their youth--senators and
statesmen--some of whom now hold prominent positions before the
people, even for the highest offices in their gift. But these men
never belonged to the class which I have attempted to portray.
Arriving in this country in youth, without the means of
subsistence--in many cases, long before they had acquired the
professions which afterward made them famous--they resorted to
school-teaching as a mere expedient for present support, without
any intention to make it the occupation of their lives, or the
means of their advancement. They were moved by an ambition which
looked beyond it, and they invariably abandoned it so soon as they
had prepared themselves for another pursuit.

But the genuine _character_ took it up as a permanent
employment--he looked to it not only as a means of temporary
subsistence, but as a source, by some of the direct or indirect
channels which we have indicated, of lasting income--and he never
threw it up until he had already secured that to which the other
class, when _they_ abandoned the occupation, were still looking
forward. In the warfare against Ignorance, therefore, these, whom
we have described, were the r