Keokuk, a long time ago, was an occasional loafing-place of that erratic genius, Henry Clay Dean.

I believe I never saw him but once; but he was much talked of when I lived there.

This is what was said of him-- He began life poor and without education.

But he educated himself--on the curbstones of Keokuk.

He would sit down on a curbstone with his book, careless or unconscious of the clatter of commerce and the tramp of the passing crowds, and bury himself in his studies by the hour, never changing his position except to draw in his knees now and then to let a dray pass unobstructed; and when his book was finished, its contents, however abstruse, had been burnt into his memory, and were his permanent possession.