E.

From the day Fernando Stevens began to read and learn of the great world
beyond the narrow confines of his western home, he was filled with the
laudable ambition to know more about it. The solitude of the wilderness
may be congenial for meditation; but it is in the moving whirl of
humanity that ideas are brightened. Fernando was promised that if he
would master the common school studies taught in their log schoolhouse,
he should be sent to one of the eastern cities to have his education
completed. Albert Stevens, the lad's father, was becoming one of the
most prosperous farmers of the west. He had purchased several tracts of
land which rapidly increased in value, and his flocks and herds
multiplied marvelously. He was in fact regarded as "rich" in those days
of simplicity. He had sent several flatboats loaded with grain down the
Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans and sold the cargoes at great
profit, so that, in addition to his fields, his stock and houses, he
had between three and four thousand dollars in money.

Fernando grew to be a tall, slender youth, and in 1806 having finished
his education, so far as the west could afford, his father determined to
send him to the East, where it was hoped he would develop into a lawyer
or a preacher. The mother hoped the latter. His brother and sister had
grown up, married and were settled on farms in the neighborhood, taking
on the same existence of their parents; living honest, peaceful and
unambitious lives.

The youth Fernando was more inclined to mental than physical activity,
and his parents, possessing an abundance of common sense, decided not to
force him to engage in an occupation distasteful to him.

What school should he enter? was a question which the father long
debated. There were Harvard and Yale, both famous seats of learning, and
there were any number of academies all over the country. Captain Stevens
finally decided to allow the youth to make his own selection, giving him
money sufficient to take a little tour in the eastern States, before
settling down.

Captain Stevens had a well-to-do neighbor, who lived across Bear Creek,
by the name of Winners. Old Zeb Winners was one of those quaint
products of the West. He was an easy-going man, proverbially slow of
speech and movement, and certainly the last person on earth one would
expect to become rich; yet he was wealthy. With all his slothfulness he
was shrewd, and could drive a better bargain than many me