Louisville was even then bursting with importance, and as I rode into it,
one bright November day, I remembered the wilderness I had seen here not
ten years gone when I had marched hither with Captain Harrod's company to
join Clark on the island. It was even then a thriving little town of log
and clapboard houses and schools and churches, and wise men were saying
of it--what Colonel Clark had long ago predicted--that it would become
the first city of commercial importance in the district of Kentucky.
I do not mean to give you an account of my struggles that winter to
obtain a foothold in the law. The time was a heyday for young
barristers, and troubles in those early days grew as plentifully in
Kentucky as corn. In short, I got a practice, for Colonel Clark was here
to help me, and, thanks to the men who had gone to Kaskaskia and
Vincennes, I had a fairly large acquaintance in Kentucky. I hired rooms
behind Mr. Crede's store, which was famed for the glass windows which had
been fetched all the way from Philadelphia. Mr. Crede was the embodiment
of the enterprising spirit of the place, and often of an evening he
called me in to see the new fashionable things his barges had brought
down the Ohio. The next day certain young sparks would drop into my room
to waylay the belles as they came to pick a costume to be worn at Mr.
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