saw you sitting there—young, ambitious, bright, with the world before you,—and, well, my boy, I took a kind of liking for you all of a sudden; but that's neither here nor there. What I was reminded of, curiously enough, was another young fellow I used to know years ago—a fellow that didn't look so much like you, perhaps, and yet who was like you in many ways.
"It must have been, let's see, back in the—well, no matter, I don't exactly recall just now, and it isn't material. But this young fellow came up from down our way to take his seat for the first time in the legislature. He was a young lawyer, smart, good-looking, a fellow every one liked. He had the gift of the gab; he could make a rattling speech, was strong on the stump and good before a jury. Everybody wanted to see him succeed. He was ambitious—ambitious as Lincoln, ambitious as the devil. His ambitions were not selfish—that is, not so damned selfish. He was no reformer, nothing like that; but he really wanted to help his people, wanted to do something to make life a little easier, a little better for the average fellow—like those he knew back home. He didn't have, perhaps, any very
