"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,