no equal, and has never since had but
one. One thing is to be specially noted as one of the chief and
indispensable causes of his success. _He had no vices_. He never drank
to excess, nor gormandized, nor gambled, nor even smoked, nor in any
other way wasted the vitality needed for a long and tough grapple with
adverse fortune. What he once wrote of himself in the early Herald was
strictly true:

"I eat and drink to live,--not live to eat and drink. Social
glasses of wine are my aversion; public dinners are my
abomination; all species of gormandizing, my utter scorn and
contempt. When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine
or viands taken for society, or to stimulate conversation,
tend only to dissipation, indolence, poverty, contempt, and
death."

This was an immense advantage, which he had in common with several of
the most mischievous men of modern times,--Calhoun, Charles XII.,
George III., and others. Correct bodily habits are of themselves such
a source of power, that the man who has them will be extremely likely
to gain the day over competitors of ten times his general worth who
have them not. Dr. Franklin used to say, that if Jack Wilkes had been
as exemplary in this particular as George III., he would have turned
the king out of his dominions. In several of the higher kinds of
labor, such as law, physic, journalism, authorship, art, when the
competition is close and keen, and many able men are near the summit,
the question, who shall finally stand upon it, often resolves itself
into one of physical endurance. This man Bennett would have lived and
died a hireling scribe, if he had had even one of the common vices.
Everything was against his rising, except alone an enormous capacity
for labor, sustained by strictly correct habits.

He lived much with politicians during these years of laborious
poverty. Gravitating always towards the winning side, he did much to
bring into power the worst set of politicians we ever had,--those who
"availed" themselves of the popularity of Andrew Jackson, and who were
afterwards used by him for the purpose of electing Martin Van Buren.
He became perfectly familiar with all that was petty and mean in the
political strifes of the day, but without ever suspecting that there
was anything in politics not petty and mean. He had no convictions of
his own, and therefore not the least belief that any politician had.
If the people were in earnes