themselves as men of sterling worth.  They were soon delighted with the young stranger, who was busily employed in his new vocation with their younger brothers.  I remember to have heard Mr. Thomas Shields say the young man teaching at his mother’s was a most remarkable man, and narrate some instances of his great powers of memory, accompanied with facts which came within his own knowledge.  These were so very extraordinary, that notwithstanding the high character for integrity borne by Shields, there were many who doubted them.

There lived at no great distance from Mrs. Shields, a planter, Mr. Thomas Hall.  This man was a coarse and illiterate overseer for some years in the county, but having carefully husbanded his earnings, was enabled, in company with James C. Wilkins, to commence planting upon an extensive scale.  At the time this young man was teaching at Mrs. Shields’, Hall had accumulated quite a fortune, and was a man of comparative leisure.  His mind was good, and now that he had an abundance of the world’s goods, and was becoming a man of consideration in the community, he felt, in his intercourse with his educated neighbors, the want of that cultivation which would make him their equal.  This had made him morbidly sensitive, and whenever an opportunity presented, he improved it in acquiring all the information possible.

On Saturdays the young schoolmaster would frequently ride over and converse with Hall.  The strong mind and coarse but cordial manners of Hall pleased him.  He was a specimen of the Southerner possessing salient points, and was a study for the Down-Easter.  Never before had he met such a specimen, and it was his delight to draw him out, little deeming he was filling the same office for his friend.  They were mutually agreeable the one to the other, and their association grew into intimacy.  Each to their friends would speak of the other as a remarkable man.  Assuredly they were; for neither had ever met such specimens as they presented to each other.  They sometimes joined in a squirrel-hunt about the plantation of Hall.  The schoolmaster’s lameness compelled him to ride, while Hall preferred to walk.  After a fatiguing tramp upon one occasion, they sat down upon the banks of Cole’s Creek, where Hall listened with great delight to the conversation of his companion.  Suddenly Hall started up, and exclaimed, with more than his usual warmth: 

“You have taught me more than I ever knew before meeting with you; but I ought not to say what I am going to say.  You, sir, were never made for a schoolmaster.  By the eternal God!”—­Hall was a Jackson man—­“you know more than any man in the county, and you have got more sense than any of them, though you are nothing but a boy.  Now, sir, go to town and study law with Bob Walker; he’s the smartest of any of them.  In two years you will be ahead of him.  If you haven’t got the money to pay your way, I have, and you shall have it.”

The term for which he had engaged was now expiring, and, as Hall had requested, he went into the office of Robert J. and Duncan Walker, and commenced the study of law.