He accepted the standard of the street as a final fact for to-day, like the broker's list of prices.
His whole plan of life was laid out.

He knew that law was the best introduction to political life, and he meant to use it for this end.
He chose to begin his career in the country, so as to feel his way more surely and gradually to its ultimate aim; but he had no intention of burning his shining talents in a grazing district, however tall its grass might grow.

His business was not with these stiff-jointed, slow-witted graziers, but with the supple, dangerous, far-seeing men who sit scheming by the gas-light in the great cities, after all the lamps and candles are out from the Merrimac to the Housatonic.

Every strong and every weak point of those who might probably be his rivals were laid down on his charts, as winds and currents and rocks are marked on those of a navigator.

All the young girls in the country, and not a few in the city, with which, as mentioned, he had frequent relations, were on his list of possible availabilities in the matrimonial line of speculation, provided always that their position and prospects were such as would make them proper matches for so considerable a person as the future Hon.
William Murray Bradshaw.
Master Gridley had made a careful study of his old pupil since they had resided in the same village.