early,
and afterward undisputed talents, acquired for me deference and respect;
and I was soon tempted to desire the applauses of the swinish multitude,
and to feel a thirsting after public distinction. In short, I grew
ambitious. I soon became sick and tired of the applauses, the fame, of
my own ten-mile horizon; its origin seemed equivocal, its worth and
quality questionable, at the best. My spirit grew troubled with a
wholesale discontent, and roved in search of a wider field, a more
elevated and extensive empire. But how could I, the petty lawyer of a
county court, in the midst of a wilderness, appropriate time, find means
and opportunities even for travel? I was poor, and profits are few to a
small lawyer, whose best cases are paid for by a bale of cotton or a
negro, when both of them are down in the market. In vain, and
repeatedly, did I struggle with circumstances that for ever foiled me in
my desires; until, in a rash and accursed hour, when chance, and you,
and the devil, threw the opportunity for crime in my path! It did not
escape me, and--but you know the rest."

"I do, but would rather hear you tell it. When you speak thus, you put
me in mind of some of the stump-speeches you used to make when you ran
for the legislature."

"Ay, that was another, and not the least of the many reverses which my
ambition was doomed to meet with. You knew the man who opposed me; you
know that a more shallow and insignificant fop and fool never yet dared
to thrust his head into a deliberative assembly. But, he was rich, and I
poor. He a potato, the growth of the soil; I, though generally admitted
a plant of more promise and pretension--I was an exotic! He was a
patrician--one of the small nobility--a growth, _sui generis_, of the
place--"

"Damn your law-phrases! stop with that, if you please."

"Well, well! he was one of the great men; I was a poor plebeian, whose
chief misfortune, at that time, consisted in my not having a father or a
great-grandfather a better man than myself! His money did the work, and
I was bought and beat out of my election, which I considered certain. I
then acquired knowledge of two things. I learned duly to estimate the
value of the democratic principle, when I beheld the vile slaves, whose
votes his money had commanded, laughing in scorn at the miserable
creature they had themselves put over them. They felt not--not they--the
double shame of their doings. They felt that he was King Log, but neve