My Worldly Wealth

To carry out the plan which my father had formed for me, and by gaining an education to take up the practice of law or of medicine when I was older, had now become an impossibility.

When all my father's property had been sold and the debts paid by Mr. Middleton, who did everything in his power to guard my interests, I had one hundred and sixty-one dollars as the sum total of my father's estate. With this small amount I must make my way in the world until I should stand on a solid foundation.

Had there been money enough left to me, I should have bought a farm near Lawrence, and there have set myself to work laying up sufficient of this world's goods to provide me with the necessaries, if not the comforts, of life.

It may be you will say that a youngster of my age would not naturally look so far ahead into the future as to realize that he must make provision against what people call a "rainy day"; but bear in mind that grief sometimes ages a lad wonderfully.

When the sharpest edge of my sorrow had been worn away by time, it was as if I had all at once become a man, with a clear sense of all that I must do in order to win a footing in the world. In a night, as it were, I had added twenty years to my twelve.