This infection was in his blood.
"Think you, Ned, me boy," said Battersleigh, one day, as they stood at the tent door--"think you, this old gray world has been inhabited a million years, by billions of people, and yet here we have a chance to own a part of it, each for himself, here, at this last minute of the world's life! Do you mind that, what it means?
Never you think a chance like that'll last forever.

Yet here we are, before the law, and almost antedatin' the social ijee.

It's the beginning man, it's the very beginnin' of things, where we're standin' here, this very blessed day of grace.

It's Batty has travelled all his life, and seen the lands, but never did Batty live till now!" "It's grand," murmured Franklin, half dreamily and unconsciously repeating the very words of his friend, as he had done before.
Yet Franklin was well bitten of the ambition germ.

It would serve him to run only in the front rank.