Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II LAWYER AND LEGISLATOR After leaving college, young Stephens taught one country school for four months, and another for a year at a salary of $500, but soon wearied of the " monotony of the repetition," and was sadly discontented. A further difficulty was involved in the control of the older pupils by so fragile and boyish-looking a teacher, although courage to make a determined effort was not lacking. It is related that on one occasion he restored order by severely applying the rod to two "fully grown" boys, either of whom was physically capable of forcibly ejecting him from the room. Broken in health, he gave up teaching and, after three months of recreation, began in 1834 to read law, at Crawford- ville, in the new county of Taliaferro, within two miles of his boyhood's home which formerly had been included in the county of Wilkes. Believing that he had neither time nor money to spare, he determined to try for admission to practice at the next term of the court three months later. He was frail of body but invincible of will, and he drove himself like a draught- horse, reading law night and day. At this period and for years afterward, strangers, supposing him to be a boy, addressed him as "sonny" or "buddy," his slight form, white brow, bloodless cheeks and anxious eye giving him the appearance of a youth of sixteen prematurely aged by disease. The ambition of so young a man to become a lawyer was the subject ofjest among those unacquainted with his powers of mind and of will. He accomplished his object within the brief period named, for in his diary under date of July 22, 1834, it is stated that he '' was this day admitted an attorney- at-law and released from a great burden of anxiety." Although reading law with feverish energy during those three and a half mo... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.