" And
this was the fortune which she had built up for me! I hated myself for
having been gulled--it seemed as if I had allowed my mother to be
cheated more than myself. Good land, I thought, was selling in Monterey
County for two dollars an acre. The next summer when I bought an eighty
across the road so as to have more plow-land, I paid three dollars and a
half an acre, and sorrowed over it afterward: for in 1857 I could have
got all I wanted of the best land--if I had had the money, which I had
not--at a dollar and a quarter. At the going price then, in 1855, this
section of land, if it had been good land, would have been worth only
twelve or thirteen hundred dollars. At that rate, what was this swamp
worth? Nothing!
I can still feel sorry for that poor boy, myself, green as grass, and
without a friend in the world to whom he could go for advice, halted in
his one-sided battle with the world, out there on the bare prairie,
looking out on what he thought was the scene of his ruin, and thinking
that every man's hand had been against him, and would always be. Where
were now all my dreams of fat cattle, sleek horses, waddling hogs, and
the fine house in which I had had so many visions of spending my life,
with a more or less clearly-seen wife--especially during those days
after Rowena Fewkes had told me how well she could cook, and proved it
by getting me my breakfast; and the later days of my stay in the Grove
of Destiny with Virginia Royall.
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