went over the tops of the low hills, and as I listened to the
"chuck, chuck" of the wagon wheels on their well-greased skeins. Rucker
and Jackway might have given me a check on the tow-path; but yet I felt
hopeful that I was to make a real success of my voyage of life to a home
and a place where I could be somebody. There was pleasure in looking
back at my riches in the clean, hard-stuffed straw-tick, the stove, the
traveling home which belonged to me.

It seems a little queer to me now to think of it as I look out of my
bay-window at my great fields of corn, my pastures dotted with stock, my
feedyard full of fat steers; or as I sit in the directors' room of the
bank and take my part as a member of the board. But I am really not as
rich now as I was then.

I was going to a country which seemed to be drawing everybody else, and
must therefore be a good country--and I had a farm. I had a great farm.
It was a mile square. It was almost like the estate that General Cantine
had near the canal at Ithaca I thought. To my boy's mind it looked too
big for me; and sometimes I wondered if I should not be able to rent it
out to tenants and grow rich on my income, like the Van Rensselaers of
the Manor before the Anti-Rent difficulties.

All the while I was passing outfits which were waiting by the roadside,
or making bad weather of it for some reason or other; or I was passed by
those who had less regard for their horse-flesh than I, or did not
realize that the horses had to go afoot; or those that drew lighter
loads. There were some carriages which went flourishing along with
shining covers; these were the aristocrats; there were other slow-going
rigs drawn by oxen. Usually there would be two or more vehicles in a
train. They camped by the roadside cooking their meals; they stopped at
wayside taverns. They gave me all sorts of how-d'ye-does as I passed.
Girls waved their hands at me from the hind-ends of rigs and said bold
things--to a boy they would not see again; but which left him blushing
and thinking up retorts for the next occasion--retorts that never seemed
to fit when the time came; and talkative women threw remarks at me about
the roads and the weather.

Men tried half a dozen times a day to trade me out of my bay mare Fanny,
or my sorrel mare Flora--they said I ought to match up with two of a
color; and the crow-baits offered me would have stocked a horse-ranch.
People with oxen offered me what looked like good swaps,