Then I told him I wanted money or farm land; and he offered me a lead mine near Mineral Point.

All the time he was getting more and more worried and excited; he used to tremble when he talked to me; and as the winter wore away, and the season drew nearer when he wanted to go on his travels, or deal with the properties in which I had found out by this time he was speculating with my mother's money, just as everybody was speculating then, in mines, town sites, farm lands, railway stocks and such things, he was on tenter-hooks, I could see that, to get rid of me, whom he thought he had given the slip forever.

Finally he came to me one morning, just as a warm February wind had begun to thaw the snow, and said, beaming as if he had found a gold mine for me: "Jacob, I've got just what you want--a splendid farm in Iowa." And he laid on the table the deed to my farm in Vandemark Township, a section of land in one solid block a mile square.

"Of course," said he, "I can't let you have all of it--'but let us say eighty acres, or even I might clean up a quarter-section, here along the east side,"-- and he pointed to a plat of it pinned fast to the deed.
"The whole piece," said I, "is worth eight hundred dollars, and not a cent more--if it's all good land.

That ain't enough." "All good land!" said he--and I could see he was surprised at the fact that I knew Iowa land was selling at a dollar and a quarter an acre.
"Why, there ain't anything but good land there.