quadrille, but it was hard work; and as the sole occupation of these
parties is dancing and card-playing--conversation apparently not
being customary--they are to me not very attractive."

He could not be happy 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,