inds and soon were again penniless. He decided
that he would not bet on anything but his own ability. Instead of
digging for gold, he set to work digging ditches for men who had mines,
but no water. This making ditches was plain labor, without excitement,
chance or glamour. You knew beforehand just how much you would make.
Philip was strong and patient; he could work from sunrise to sunset.

He was paid five dollars a day. Then he took contracts to dig ditches,
and sometimes he made ten dollars a day. Parties who were "busted" and
wished to borrow were offered a job. He set them to work and paid them
for what they did, and no more. It was all a question of mathematics. In
five years Philip Armour had saved eight thousand dollars. It was enough
to buy the best farm in Oneida County, and this was all he wanted. There
was a girl back there who had taunted him and dared him to go away and
make his fortune. They parted in a tiff--that's the way she got rid of
him. There was another man in the case, but Philip was too innocent to
know this. The peaceful hills of New York lured and beckoned. He
responded to the call and started back home. In half the time it took to
go, he had arrived. But alas, the hills had shrunken. The mighty stream
that once ran through Stockbridge was but a rill.

And the girl--the girl had married another--a worthy horse-doctor.
Philip called on her. She was yellow and tired and had two fine babies.
She was glad to see her old friend Philip, but the past was as dead to
her as the present. In her handgrasp there was no thrill. She had given
him a big chase; and soon his sadness made way for gratitude in that she
had married the horse-doctor. He gave them his blessing. Philip looked
around at farms--several were for sale, but none suited him.

On the way back from California he had traveled by way of the Great
Lakes and stopped two days at Milwaukee. It was a fine city--a growing
place, the gateway of the West and the market-place where the vessels
loaded for the East.

Milwaukee had one rival--Chicago, eighty-five miles south.

Chicago, however, was on low, flat, marshy ground. It would always be a
city, of course, because it was the end of navigation, but Milwaukee
would feed and stock the folks who were westward bound. So to Milwaukee
went Philip Armour, resolved there to stake his fortune in trade.
Opportunity offered and he joined with Fred B. Miles, on March First,
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, i