credit to himself for his sagacity in foreseeing the capabilities
of Red Wing. If he really did detect its value at that time, it
shows a very fine judgment and accounts for his prosperity since.
Eliab Hill affirms this to be true, but most people think he does
the planning for the whole settlement. Nimbus has done extremely
well, however. He has sold off, I should judge, nearly half his
land, in small parcels, has worked hard, and had excellent crops.
I should not wonder, if his present crop comes off well and the
market holds on, if before Christmas he were worth as many thousands
as he had hundreds the day he bought that piney old-field. It
don't take much tobacco at a dollar a pound, which his last crop
brought, lugs and all, to make a man that does his own work and
works his own land right well off. He's had good luck, has worked
hard, and has either managed well or been well advised; it don't
matter which.

"He has gathered a good crowd around him too, sober, hard-working
men; and most of them have done well too. So that it has become
quite a flourishing little settlement. I suppose there are some
fifty or sixty families live there. They have a church, which
they use for a school-house, and it is by a great deal the best
school-house in the county too. Of course they got' outside help,
some from the Bureau, I reckon, and more perhaps from some charitable
association. I should think the church or school-house must have
cost fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars. They have a splendid
school. Two ladies from the North are teaching there--real ladies,
I should judge, too."

The listener smiled at this indorsement.