He wanted to be getting ahead in the world.
"Why don't you go to the West ?" said an acquaintance, to whom he was one day making complaint of his slow progress.

"That is the country where enterprise meets a just reward.

If I were as young a man as you are, you wouldn't catch me long in these parts.

I would sell out and buy five or six hundred acres of government land and settle down as a farmer.

In a few years you'd see me with property on my hands worth looking at." This set Parker to thinking and inquiring about the West.