and Spanish and dancing and be good enough
for any man's wife. Think of that. Father says that I must marry a
big man. Jiminy Crimps! As if a big man wouldn't know better. I am
often afraid that you will know too much. I know what will happen
when your intellect sees how foolish I am. My grandmother says that
I am frivolous and far from God. I am afraid it's true, but
sometimes I want to be good--only sometimes. I remember you said,
once, that you were going to be like Silas Wright. Honestly I
believe that you could. So does mother. I want you to keep trying,
but it makes me afraid. Oh, dear! How sad and homesick I feel
to-day! Tell me the truth now, when you write."

That evening I wrote my first love-letter--a fairly warm and moving
fragment of history. My family have urged me to let it go in the record,
but I have firmly refused. There are some things which I can not do even
in this little masquerade. It is enough to say that when the day ended I
had deliberately chosen two of the many ways that lay before me.

CHAPTER XVI

I USE MY OWN COMPASS AT A FORK IN THE ROAD

Swiftly now I move across the border into manhood--a serious, eager,
restless manhood. It was the fashion of the young those days.

I spent a summer of hard work in the fields. Evenings I read the books
which Mr. Wright had loaned to me, Blackstone's _Commentaries_ and
_Greenleaf on Evidence_ and a translation by Doctor Bowditch of
LaPlace's _Mecanique Celeste_. The latter I read aloud. I mention it
because in a way it served as an antidote for that growing sense of
expansion in my intellect. In the vastness of infinite space I found the
littleness of man and his best accomplishments.

Mr. Wright came up for a day's fishing in July. My uncle and I took him
up the river. I remember that after he had landed a big trout he sat
down and held the fish up before him and looked proudly at the graceful,
glowing, arrowy shape.

"I never did anything in the Senate that seemed half so important as
this," he remarked thoughtfully.

While we ate our luncheon he described Jackson and spoke of the famous
cheese which he had kept on a table in the vestibule of the White House
for his callers. He described his fellow senators--Webster, Clay, Rives,
Calhoun and Benton. I remember that Webster was, in his view, the least
of them, although at his best the greatest orator. We had a delightful
day, and when I