by a correction
of the ancient surveys we still own a thousand acres, in a coal
district, out of the hundred thousand acres which my father left us when
he died in 1847. The gentleman brought a proposition; also he brought a
reputable and well-to-do citizen of New York. The proposition was that
the Tennesseean gentleman should sell that land; that the New York
gentleman should pay all the expenses and fight all the lawsuits, in
case any should turn up, and that of such profit as might eventuate the
Tennesseean gentleman should take a third, the New-Yorker a third, and
Sam Moffett and his sister and I--who are surviving heirs--the remaining
third.

This time I hope we shall get rid of the Tennessee land for good and all
and never hear of it again.

[Sidenote: (1867.)]

[Sidenote: (1871.)]

I came East in January, 1867. Orion remained in Carson City perhaps a
year longer. Then he sold his twelve-thousand-dollar house and its
furniture for thirty-five hundred in greenbacks at about sixty per cent.
discount. He and his wife took passage in the steamer for home in
Keokuk. About 1871 or '72 they came to New York. Orion had been trying
to make a living in the law ever since he had arrived from the Pacific
Coast, but he had secured only two cases. Those he was to try free of
charge--but the possible result will never be known, because the parties
settled the cases out of court without his help.

Orion got a job as proof-reader on the New York "Evening Post" at ten
dollars a week. By and by he came to Hartford and wanted me to get him a
place as reporter on a Hartford paper. Here was a chance to try my
scheme again, and I did it. I made him go to the Hartford "Evening
Post," without any letter of introduction, and propose to scrub and
sweep and do all sorts of things for nothing, on the plea that he didn't
need money but only needed work, and that that was what he was pining
for. Within six weeks he was on the editorial staff of that paper at
twenty dollars a week, and he was worth the money. He was presently
called for by some other paper at better wages, but I made him go to the
"Post" people and tell them about it. They stood the raise and kept him.
It was the pleasantest berth he had ever had in his life. It was an easy
berth. He was in every way comfortable. But ill-luck came. It was bound
to come.

A new Republican daily was to be started in a New England city by a
stock company of well-to-do politicians, and they