outrageously red nose, took to me hugely. I heard him whisper to my
father that I was a lad of mettle, and might make something clever; to
which my father replied that "I had good points, but was an ill-broken
whelp, and required a great deal of the whip." Perhaps this very
conversation raised me a little in his esteem, for I found the
red-nosed old gentleman was a veteran fox-hunter of the neighborhood,
for whose opinion my father had vast deference. Indeed, I believe he
would have pardoned anything in me more readily than poetry; which he
called a cursed, sneaking, puling, housekeeping employment, the bane of
all true manhood. He swore it was unworthy of a youngster of my
expectations, who was one day to have so great an estate, and would he
able to keep horses and hounds and hire poets to write songs for him
into the bargain.

I had now satisfied, for a time, my roving propensity. I had exhausted
the poetical feeling. I had been heartily buffeted out of my love for
theatrical display. I felt humiliated by my exposure, and was willing
to hide my head anywhere for a season; so that I might be out of the
way of the ridicule of the world; for I found folks not altogether so
indulgent abroad as they were at my father's table. I could not stay at
home; the house was intolerably doleful now that my mother was no
longer there to cherish me. Every thing around spoke mournfully of her.
The little flower-garden in which she delighted was all in disorder and
overrun with weeds. I attempted, for a day or two, to arrange it, but
my heart grew heavier and heavier as I labored. Every little
broken-down flower that I had seen her rear so tenderly, seemed to
plead in mute eloquence to my feelings. There was a favorite
honeysuckle which I had seen her often training with assiduity, and had
heard her say it should be the pride of her garden. I found it
grovelling along the ground, tangled and wild, and twining round every