the matter of farming, of which at present I know nothing, being one of that amphibious species, half merchant, half scholar, with a strong inclination to become either a cobbler or a blacksmith.

"I should suppose that, in a State like yours, a person possessing some knowledge of the business, and willing to work, might, by taking a small farm upon some of the riv ers which empty into the Ohio, and attending to the raising of grain, cattle, getting down lumber, &c., lead a quiet life and make some money. Will you be good enough to inform me, if without inconvenience you can, what the value of cleared land of good quality upon the rivers may be per acre; and what is the probable cost of getting such a farm as a new settler would want into operation? However, I would not trouble you with any but the simple question, whether I can get occupation at once, or soon after arrival, in some active business, which I should prefer, or even in an in-door employment; and, by the way, perhaps the country would be better than the town to serve my appren ticeship in. I am ready to try any thing almost, which will leave me free to quit when I please.

"I beg you will not give yourself the least trouble, nor spend any of your time to answer me, unless you can well afford it; and hoping before long to see your city and self, I remain, your obedient servant, &c.

"JAMES H. PERKINS."

II.

MANHOOD.

1832-1849.

It was in February, 1832, that Mr. Perkins reached Cincinnati, intending to remain but a week or two, till the ground was sufficiently cleared from snow and settled, for him to look about and choose a farm. Meanwhile, he was asked to pass his leisure hours at the office of his friend, Mr. Walker, who had then just entered upon the professional career which has since so deservedly placed him in the front rank of Western jurisprudents. It was a matter of course, with his habits of vigorous inquiry, that he should take up the books around him, and catch such glimpses as he could of the science of the law. He had long since learned to husband his time, and knew well that all information comes sometimes in play, while variety of discipline best matures the judgment. So, instead of idling, gossiping, or staring at novelties, he studied; studied so diligently, indeed, that, unawares, he found himself becoming profoundly interested in tracing out the symmetrical system of justice, which, like a network of nerves, pervades the body of social relations. The result of this accidental application was, that, drawn in part by the exhilarating pleasure of the study, and in part by the counsels of Mr. Walker, and of young friends whom he met at the

office, who all admired his commanding intellect, he suddenly resolved to devote hims. If to the law. "For a week past," he wrote, in great spirits, "I have been too busy to do any thing but study, fourteen hours per day being my allowance of work, for I am not joking, I assure you. After all the uncertainties of my life, I have at last hit upon that to which I should have been trained from youth upward, if I could have had my own way. But in knowledge, I fancy I am about as far on as if I had passed through college, and in wickedness being a little behindhand is no harm. So, Mr. Professional, here 's at you. Having taken up study in earnest, I mean to stick to it." And again to his father he playfully says: "The books which you have had the kindness to send have not arrived, but they will be amply in time to instruct me in the business of horticulture, as I see small prospect of becoming a farmer for a year or two yet. The law, that came in on a visit merely, may remain as a resident, unless something new turns up. The more I study it, the more I like it; though this may be on the principle that a horse. goes by in a burning stable, when he runs into the fire instead of out of the door. In Cincinnati, the number. of lawyers is large; but in the country there is a wide field to do justice — that is, to practise abominations — in. Titles, to be sure, are clear hereabouts, men peaceable, and laws mild; but I flatter myself that I can pick up information enough in two years to change all that,' sufficiently, at least, to serve my own interests."

Mr. Perkins was yet further led to stay in Cincinnati by the charms of the social circle to which he was at once introduced, and where he found himself welcomed with a cordial truthfulness, that opened his heart, and set

free his long prisoned affections. In place of fashionable coldness, aristocratic hauteur, purse-pride, ostentation, reserve, non-committalism, the tyranny of cliques, and the fear of leaders, he found himself moving among a pleasant company of hospitable, easy, confiding, plainspoken, cheerful friends, gathered from all parts of the Union, and loosed at once by choice and promiscuous intercourse from trammels of bigotry and conventional prejudice. He breathed for once freely, and felt with joy the blood flowing quick and warm throughout his spiritual frame. He caught, too, the buoyant hopefulness that animates a young, vigorous, and growing community, and mingled delightedly with groups of highhearted, enterprising men, just entering on new careers, and impelled by the hope of generous service in literary, professional, or commercial life. Above all, happiest good-fortune brought him at once under the influence of woman, as he had so long in the ideal dreamed of her, — serenely wise, pure as lovely, spreading around her the verdure and bloom of goodness, through daily charities of home. Extracts from his letters will best show the elasticity of his temper, and the direction of his thoughts.

May 6th.-"Being confined the greater part of the time to an office, carrying on a war against reports and textbooks, and busied in gathering together my spoils, I can have but little to tell you as to the world without; though once in a while, to be sure, when I feel very anti-sublunary, I take a turn of ten or twelve miles in the country, and fancy myself in the garden of Eden, the only thing in the way of completing this idea being the prevalence of rail-fences. To a person who has been all his life in New England, where a man ploughs, not his land, but his rocks, and where the great secret of agriculture, if I mistake not, is, by dint

of ploughing, harrowing, hoeing, raking, and hard swearing, so to arrange the stones that the sun, the rain, and the waterpot may be able to coax up one blade of corn between three pebbles, to a person' raised' in that pudding-stone part of the republic, this country seems miraculous. For here a man runs his coulter along a hill-top, and turns up a soil as black as plum-cake, and without a stone in it half as big as those I used to eat in your dyspepsia plum-cake, — which was made, I apprehend, upon the principle, that men, like chickens, have gizzards; indeed, this soil is more like wedding-cake, for, like wedding-cake, it is too rich to be wholesome. You speak to me of selecting a place where 'water will be at hand.' But water, unless it be the rain from heaven, is never put on the ground here, notwithstanding the plants which in Pennsylvania and Virginia grow only in the rich bottoms flourish here upon the ridges. Indeed, if one can but make a long leg with his imagination, and step into the year 2032, he sees here a true paradise ; for there is not a foot of land that I know of back from the river hill, one side of which, next the river, is sometimes precipitous, that is not as well worthy of cultivation as any square inch in your garden.* The woods, which cover much of the country even in this immediate vicinity, are not, as with you, haunted by a confederacy of dry branches, leaves, stumps, and underbrush; but we have a forest composed of immense trees running up twenty or thirty feet before they branch, and walk under them upon. grass as smooth and soft as if Aunt — had had the rolling of it, with not a leaf, dry leaf I mean, to be discerned, which I can but assert and not explain, — and troubled by nothing in the way of undergrowth, unless the great elm on Boston Common might pass for a weed or sucker.

"But the mineral immensity of the country is as unique as its agricultural; for iron, coal, salt, lead, lime, are the substra*This letter is addressed to his father.