whether it would not be well for me, like Mr. C and Colonel H, to go to Oxford. When riding with the old gentleman the next day, he told me of her wish. I was surprised, but even then I knew she would, at the last minute, change her mind, and I said as much, with due respect. For a time he rode on in silence, and at last said: "Young man, this is your country; stay here. What do you want to do?" I said boldly I should like to be a surveyor and help in the settling and surveying of his lordship's lands in the valley. He said I was young to contend among hostile squatters, but he would talk with Lawrence of it. I heard no more of Oxford, and this is the answer he made my mother. It seems to me as I read this letter, after the lapse of forty-nine years, that what his lordship wrote was very near to the truth; nevertheless, it greatly displeased my mother. But she was always displeased with any one who did not agree with her, which, indeed, was hard to do, as sister Betty Lewis once said, because, whenever for peace you were on her side, you found that she had changed to the opposite opinion.
