or
as long as you can stay. I would like to show you the
country about here and have you ride after my team. I've got
a pair that can do it inside three minutes. Do you remember
Liddell of our class? He is an architect, you know. I got
him to come to Wahee, and he has all he can do putting up
business blocks. We have got some here equal to anything in
Chicago....

"Yes, I am United States judge for this district. There is
not much money in it, but it will help me professionally by
and by. I shall not keep it long. Do I go into politics
much, you ask. I used to, but I've got through for the
present. The folks about here wanted to run me for Congress
last term, but I hadn't any use for it. As to what you are
kind enough to say about my 'success,' etc., whatever
success I have had is owing to nothing but a capacity for
hard work, which is the only talent that I lay claim to.
They want a man out here who will do the work that comes to
hand, and keep on doing it till something better turns
up....

"So Berkeley has turned out a dilettante instead of an
African explorer. I heard he was a minister. He does not
seem to have much ambition even in that line of life. I
should think Armstrong had got the right kind of place for
him. He was a good fellow, but never had much practical
ability. You say very little about Clay. How is old
'Sweetness and Light,' any way? I saw some fluff of his in
one of the magazines,--a 'romance' I think he called it.
This is not an age for scribbling romances. The country
wants something solider. I never took much stock in
philosophers like Berkeley and Clay. There is the same thing
the trouble with them both: they don't want to do any hard
work, and they conceal their laziness under fine
names,--culture, transcendentalism, and what not? 'Feeble
and restless youths, born to inglorious days.'"

This letter may be supplemented by another,--say Exhibit B,--which I
received from Clay not long after:

"MY DEAR POLISSON: It occurs to me that your question the
other day, as to how I was 'getting on,' did not receive as
candid an answer as it deserved. I am afraid that you
carried away an impression of me as of a man who suspected
himself to be a failure, but had not the manliness to
acknowledge it. You w