The last evening I spent at Juneau with Judge Mellen and his interesting wife. It was ten o'clock when we parted. The sun was still shining and the birds singing when we shook hands good-bye, and he said: "We will meet again, where friends meet friends which they loved on earth." As the steamer pulled off from the shore I thought of the friends I had gained in Alaska to make my life more interesting in that home where the flowers fade not and the inhabitants never grow old.
MY EDUCATION
In returning to my mental endeavors, I gladly confess that before I had passed out of my teens, my lack of a common school education caused me deep regret, but I braced myself bravely against adversity and soon found myself working evenings over the very rudiments of language which I had spurned in the old Birch School House.
After my marriage to Mary Hoyt, she took me in hand and together evenings we read "The Hoosier School Master," "Belle of Ores Islands," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and many other good books, after which I struck in for myself with Webster's unabridged at my elbow. By working days and studying nights I soon became conversant with Stowe, Eliot, Dickens, Shakespeare and that class of literature which illustrates human nature. Later I took up the sciences, geology, astronomy and what else I cared for, together with the languages under private instructors, which, with my experience at Evanston, gave me a comparatively good understanding as to how these great subjects are handled in our classical institutions of learning. I never aspired to scholarship; my ambition is to discern truth.
For diversion I am usually working up some subject which, when formed into a book, I present to my friends, never thinking of recompense, as my business affords me more than I need, and as to notoriety, I have no ambition that way.
"Jim Hall and the Richardsons" was my first literary endeavor. It evolved out of my long siege in ferreting out the chronological trail of the Stafford branch of Richardsons.
"Rose Lind" is an assumed exposure of the far-reaching evil influences of the grain gamblers on the Chicago Board of Trade.