seemed prone to forget. Whether he had run away, or his father had

turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve, he was

thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked

him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took

a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life;

taught him all he knew himself--to take tin-types (as well as I can make

out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the corner

of a road. "He was a grand specimen," cried Pinkerton; "I wish you could

have seen him, Mr. Dodd. He had an appearance of magnanimity that used

to remind me of the patriarchs." On the death of this random protector,

the boy inherited the plant and continued the business. "It was a life

I could have chosen, Mr. Dodd!" he cried. "I have been in all the finest

scenes of that magnificent continent that we were born to be the heirs

of. I wish you could see my collection of tin-types; I wish I had them

here. They were taken for my own pleasure and to be a memento; and they

show Nature in her grandest as well as her gentlest moments." As he

tramped the Western States and Territories, taking tin-types, the boy

was continually getting hold of books, good, bad, and indifferent,

popular and abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's

Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder) he had

managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the

products, and the country, with an eye unusually observant and a

memory unusually retentive; and he was collecting for himself a body of

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