airs he accepted and almost to his
death sustained the management in chief; achieving not less, by his
admirable judgment, the warm approval and thanks of that wide-spread
association, than, by the most amiable virtues of private life,
winning in Washington, as he had done everywhere else, from all that
approached him, a singular degree of deference and affection.

But the close of this long career of honor and of usefulness was now
at hand. In 1839, he lost the wife whose tenderness had cheered the
labors and whose gay intelligence had brightened the leisure of his
existence. She had lived the delight of that intimate society to which
she had confined faculties that would have adorned any circle
whatever; and she died lamented in proportion by it, and by the only
others to whom she was much known,--the poor. Her husband survived her
but two years,--expiring at his son's house in Raleigh, where he was
on a visit, in April, 1841, at the age of eighty. He died as calm as a
child, in the placid faith of a true Christian.

Still telling his story in the order of dates, the writer would now
turn to the younger Joseph Gales. As we have seen, he arrived in this
country when seven years old, and went to Raleigh about six years
afterwards. There he was placed in a school, where he made excellent
progress,--profiting by the recollection of his earlier lessons,
received from that best of all elementary teachers, a mother of
well-cultivated mind. His boyhood, as usual, prefigured the mature
man: it was diligent in study, hilarious at play; his mind bent upon
solid things, not the showy. For all good, just, generous, and kindly
things he had the warmest impulse and the truest perceptions. Quick to
learn and to feel, he was slow only of resentment. Never was man born
with more of those lacteals of the heart which secrete the milk of
human kindness. Of the classic tongues, he can be said to have learnt
only the Latin: the Greek was then little taught in any part of our
country. For the Positive Sciences he had much inclination; since it
is told, among other things, that he constructed instruments for
himself, such as an electrical machine, with the performances of which
he much amazed the people of Raleigh. Meantime he was forming at home,
under the good guidance there, a solid knowledge of all those fine old
authors whose works make the undegenerate literature of our language
and then constituted what they called Polite Letters. Wit