ing of a jovial and candid nature soon
drew from me a fairly coherent statement of my desire to do something in
the world.

At the end of a long talk he said, "Why don't you come to Boston and
take a special course at the University? I know the Professor of
Literature, and I can also give you a letter to the principal of a
school of Oratory."

This offer threw me into such excitement that I was unable to properly
thank my adviser, but I fell into depths of dejection as soon as he left
town. "How can I go east? How can I carry out such a plan?" I asked
myself with bitter emphasis.

All I had in the world was a small trunk, a couple of dozen books, a
valise and a few acres of barren unplowed land. My previous visit to
Boston was just the sort to tempt me to return, but my experiences as a
laborer in New England had lessened my confidence in its resources--and
yet the thought of being able to cross the Common every day opened a
dazzling vista. The very fact that Mr. Bashford had gone there from the
west as a student, a poor student, made the prodigiously daring step
seem possible to me. "If only I had a couple of hundred dollars," I said
to my mother who listened to my delirious words in silence. She divined
what was surging in my heart and feared it.

Thereafter I walked the floor of my room or wandered the prairie roads
in continual debate. "What is there for me to do out here?" I demanded.
"I can farm on these windy dusty acres--that's all. I am a failure as a
merchant and I am sick of the country."

There were moments of a morning or at sunset when the plain was splendid
as a tranquil sea, and in such moments I bowed down before its
mysterious beauty--but for the most part it seemed an empty, desolate,
mocking world. The harvest was again light and the earth shrunk and
seamed for lack of moisture.

A hint of winter in the autumn air made me remember the remorseless
winds and the iron earth over which the snows swept as if across an icy
polar sea. I shuddered as I thought of again fighting my way to that
desolate little cabin in McPherson County. I recalled but dimly the
exultation with which I had made my claim. Boston, by contrast, glowed
with beauty, with romance, with history, with glory like the vision of
some turreted town built in the eastern sky at sunset.

"I'll do it," I said at last. "I'll sell my claim. I'll go east. I'll
find some little hole to creep into. I'll study night and day and so fit
mysel