alone, and there were good reasons against his
being joined by his wife and children.
"With my reserved habits," he says, "it would take a great deal
longer to become intimate here than to thaw the Baltic. I have only
to 'knock that it shall be opened to me,' but that is just what I
hate to do. . . . 'Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither.'"
Disappointed in his expectations, but happy in the thought of meeting his
wife and children, he came back to his household to find it clad in
mourning for the loss of its first-born.
VI.
1844. AEt. 30.
LETTER TO PARK BENJAMIN.--POLITICAL VIEWS AND FEELINGS.
A letter to Mr. Park Benjamin, dated December 17, 1844, which has been
kindly lent me by Mrs. Mary Lanman Douw of Poughkeepsie, gives a very
complete and spirited account of himself at this period. He begins with a
quiet, but tender reference to the death of his younger brother, Preble,
one of the most beautiful youths seen or remembered among us, "a great
favorite," as he says, "in the family and in deed with every one who knew
him." He mentions the fact that his friends and near connections, the
Stackpoles, are in Washington, which place he considers as exceptionally
odious at the time when he is writing. The election of Mr. Polk as the
opponent of Henry Clay gives him a discouraged feeling about our
institutions. The question, he thinks, is now settled that a statesman
can never again be called to administer the government of the country. He
is almost if not quite in despair "because it is now proved that a man,
take him for all in all, better qualified by intellectual power, energy
and purity of character, knowledge of men, a great combination of
personal qualities, a frank, high-spirited, manly bearing, keen sense of
honor, the power of attracting and winning men, united with a vast
experience in affairs, such as no man (but John Quincy Adams) now living
has had and no man in this country can ever have again,--I say it is
proved that a man better qualified by an extraordinary combination of
advantages to administer the government than any man now living, or any
man we can ever produce again, can be beaten by anybody. . . . . It has
taken forty years of public life to prepare such a man for the
Presidency, and the result is that he can be beaten by anybody,--Mr. Polk
is anybody,--he is Mr. Quelconque."
I do not venture to quote the most burning sentences of this impassioned
letter. It show
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