feeble, and it was partly from the sense of this that he declined the
overtures, well backed up with money, to establish an independent paper
in Des Vaches. He felt that there was not fight enough in him for the
work, even if he had not taken that strong disgust for public life which
included the place and its people. He wanted to get away, to get far
away, and with the abrupt and total change in his humour he reverted to
a period in his life when journalism and politics and the ambition of
Congress were things undreamed of.

At that period he was a very young architect, with an inclination toward
the literary side of his profession, which made it seem profitable to
linger, with his Ruskin in his hand, among the masterpieces of Italian
Gothic, when perhaps he might have been better employed in designing
red-roofed many-verandaed, consciously mullioned seaside cottages on the
New England coast. He wrote a magazine paper on the zoology of the
Lombardic pillars in Verona, very Ruskinian, very scornful of modern
motive. He visited every part of the peninsula, but he gave the greater
part of his time to North Italy, and in Venice he met the young girl
whom he followed to Florence. His love did not prosper; when she went
away she left him in possession of that treasure to a man of his
temperament, a broken heart. From that time his vague dreams began to
lift, and to let him live in the clear light of common day; but he was
still lingering at Florence, ignorant of the good which had befallen
him, and cowering within himself under the sting of wounded vanity, when
he received a letter from his elder brother suggesting that he should
come and see how he liked the architecture of Des Vaches. His brother
had been seven years at Des Vaches, where he had lands, and a lead-mine,
and a scheme for a railroad, and had lately added a daily newspaper to
his other enterprises. He had, in fact, added two newspapers; for having
unexpectedly and almost involuntarily become the owner of the Des Vaches