oint. Trade was increasing daily,
and rapidly filling up the town with mercantile men. The young and
enterprising were hurrying thither, and in a few years there was met
here more talent and more enterprise than at any other point in the
State. The Bar had Prentiss, John Guion, McNutt, Sharkey, the three
Yergers, Anderson, Lake, Brook, Burwell, and many others of
distinction, including the erratic H.S. Foote.

The entire population was a live one, and every branch of business was
pushed with a _vim_ commensurate with the abilities and enterprise of
the population. The planters of the immediately adjacent country were
men of intelligence and character, and were animated with the spirit of
the people of the town, forming on the whole a community of almost
reckless enterprise. It was at such a time and in the midst of such a
people that young Prentiss had made his selection of a home, and a
field for the future exercise of his professional abilities.

Young, ardent, and ambitious, he sought to rival his seniors at the
Bar. Unwilling to wait on time, he aspired to leap at once to this
equality. It was the daring of genius, and of a genius which counted as
only a stimulant the obstacles intervening. To grapple with giants,
such as he found in Guion, Yerger, Sharkey, McNutt, and Lake, would
have intimidated a less bold and daring mind; but Prentiss courted the
conflict _con amore_, and applying all his herculean powers with the
vigor of youth and the ardency of enterprise, he soon found himself
quite equal to any competitor.

When an infant, a fever settled in his leg, causing it to wither from
the knee to the foot, and doomed him through life to lameness. Like
Byron, he was sensitive upon the subject of this physical defect. It
was a serious obstacle to his locomotion, and in speaking compelled a
sameness of position injurious to the effect of his oratory. Scarcely
had two years elapsed from the time of his admission to the Bar before
his fame as a lawyer and advocate was filling the State. His business
had increased to such an extent as to require his undivided attention,
as he was employed in almost every important suit in that section of
the State. His qualities of heart were as conspicuous as those of his
brain, which had endeared him to the people of Vicksburg perhaps more
than any other citizen. This social and professional popularity caused
him to be elected to the Legislature of the State. He belonged to the
Whig