need not
be ashamed. My life during the almost twenty years since I left
Maryland has been, as the preceding period had all been, a scene
of unremitting effort in very many ways; and now, if the force of
invincible habit permitted me to live otherwise, I should hardly
escape by any other means a solitary if not a desolate old age.
Solitary, because of a numerous family all, except one young
son, are either in the great battle of life or in their graves.
Desolate, because the terrible curse which marks our times and
desolates our country has divided my house, like thousands of
others, and my children literally fight in opposite armies and my
kindred and friends die by each other's hands. There is no
likelihood, in my opinion, that our Legislature will send me to
the Senate of the United States; and will you wonder if I assure
you that I have never desired that they should. Was it not a
purer, perhaps a higher, ambition to prove that in the most
frightful times and through long years a simple citizen had it in
his power by his example, his voice and his pen, by courage, by
disinterestedness, by toil, to become a real power in the State
of himself; and have not you, delicately nurtured woman as you
are, also cherished a similar ambition and done a similar work,
even from a more difficult position? * * * I beg to be remembered
in kind terms to your father, and that you will accept the
assurances of my great respect and esteem.

ROBERT J. BRECKENRIDGE.

DANVILLE, Ky., _April 27, 1865_.

My Dear Miss Carroll:

* * * You will easily understand how much I value the good
opinion you express of my past efforts to serve our country, and
of my ability to serve it still further; and it is very kind of
you to report to me with your approbation the good opinion of
others, whom to have satisfied is in a measure fame. * * * Many
years ago, without reserve and with a perfect and irrevocable
consecration, I gave myself and all I had to Him, and have never,
for one moment, regretted that I did so. The single principle of
my existence, from that day to this, has been to do with my might
what it was given to me to see it was God's will I should do.
You see, my dear Miss Carroll, that I, who neve