the mushroom life;
the haste, the crudities of living; the ugliness and the disorder; the
unsettled, ever restless, patchy catch as catch can existence; the
attempt, in a word, to make life, to build a town, a capital. All this
shocked or amused her. Did I not see it with English eyes used to
tranquillity and order? She wondered why Douglas had left the East. He
could have risen there in time; and when he should have done so it would
have been an eminence. Had he not acquired brusqueness, vulgarity since
coming west? A man of undoubted gifts, she conceded--yet. Perhaps I was
her favorite after all.

To test her out, I put my own story around the life of a friend, telling
her of a man who had married an octoroon, leaving a daughter of color
and a son by a previous marriage with a white woman; also describing the
consequences that had ensued. Miss Walker heard me with interested
attention. She admitted that the complications were serious.
Undoubtedly, many women in the West would care nothing about such a
relationship, there was so much indifference here to form and breeding;
anything for a husband, anything to get along in the world. Well, if
Miss Walker from Connecticut could see my relationship to Zoe in such a
light, could I blame Dorothy from Tennessee for judging it more
seriously? Perhaps after all this was a woman's reaction to my story.

Later I had a party at my house, inviting all the young crowd of
Springfield to come over. Douglas came too, and Reverdy and Sarah and
Mr. and Mrs. Sturtevant. It was just after Christmas. We had a roaring
fire in the fireplace. We popped corn and pulled candy. I brought in my
old fiddler from the woods to play for us. We danced. These festivities
were in honor of Miss Walker, and she entered into the fun with great
zest. Day by day we were better friends. When she came to go back to
Springfield she was no longer Miss Walker to me, she was Abigail. I was
not in love with her--there was Dorothy still in my heart. Yet I was
very fond of her. I thought she approved of me. As we parted she asked
me why I did not come to Chicago. It was fast growing into a city. What
better field for making money? Vaguely the idea entered my mind and
began to mature.

CHAPTER XXV

The truth was that the loneliness in my life was depressing me; it was
in a sense work without hope--only the hope of being rich. While I could
not doubt Abigail's fitness as a mate for me, and though I was in