he wrote on temperance. In
verse-making, too, he tried himself, and in satire on persons offensive
to him or others,--satire the rustic wit of which was not always fit for
ears polite. Also political thoughts he put upon paper, and some of
his pieces were even deemed good enough for publication in the county
weekly.

Thus he won a neighborhood reputation as a clever young man, which he
increased by his performances as a speaker, not seldom drawing upon
himself the dissatisfaction of his employers by mounting a stump in the
field, and keeping the farm hands from their work by little speeches in
a jocose and sometimes also a serious vein. At the rude social frolics
of the settlement he became an important person, telling funny, stories,
mimicking the itinerant preachers who had happened to pass by, and
making his mark at wrestling matches, too; for at the age of seventeen
he had attained his full height, six feet four inches in his stockings,
if he had any, and a terribly muscular clodhopper he was. But he
was known never to use his extraordinary strength to the injury or
humiliation of others; rather to do them a kindly turn, or to enforce
justice and fair dealing between them. All this made him a favorite in
backwoods society, although in some things he appeared a little odd,
to his friends. Far more than any of them, he was given not only to
reading, but to fits of abstraction, to quiet musing with himself, and
also to strange spells of melancholy, from which he often would pass in
a moment to rollicking outbursts of droll humor. But on the whole he
was one of the people among whom he lived; in appearance perhaps even
a little more uncouth than most of them,--a very tall, rawboned youth,
with large features, dark, shrivelled skin, and rebellious hair; his
arms and legs long, out of proportion; clad in deerskin trousers, which
from frequent exposure to the rain had shrunk so as to sit tightly on
his limbs, leaving several inches of bluish shin exposed between their
lower end and the heavy tan-colored shoes; the nether garment held
usually by only one suspender, that was strung over a coarse homemade
shirt; the head covered in winter with a coonskin cap, in summer with a
rough straw hat of uncertain shape, without a band.

It is doubtful whether he felt himself much superior to his
surroundings, although he confessed to a yearning for some knowledge
of the world outside of the circle in which he lived. This wish was
g