I was drawn to him at once in confidence and friendship.

He went on to tell me later that he had been in the Black Hawk War; that he had been spending some time in Chicago trying to decide whether he would locate there or return to Jacksonville.

He had been offered forty acres of land about a mile south of the river for the pony.

But what good was the land?
It was nothing but sand and scrub oaks.

Unless the town grew and made the land valuable as building property, it would never be of value.