The week had not quite passed when I received from my father the letter
I am about to place before the reader; and you may judge how earnestly
his soul must have been in the task it had volunteered, if you observe
how little, comparatively speaking, the letter contains of the
subtleties and pedantries (may the last word be pardoned, for it is
scarcely a just one) which ordinarily left my father,--a scholar even in
the midst of his emotions. He seemed here to have abandoned his books,
to have put the human heart before the eyes of his pupil, and said,
"Read and un-learn!"

To Pisistratus Caxton.

My Dear Son,--It were needless to tell you all the earlier
difficulties I have had to encounter with my charge, nor to repeat
all the means which, acting on your suggestion (a correct one), I
have employed to arouse feelings long dormant and confused, and
allay others long prematurely active and terribly distinct. The
evil was simply this: here was the intelligence of a man in all
that is evil, and the ignorance of an infant in all that is good.
In matters merely worldly, what wonderful acumen; in the plain
principles of right and wrong, what gross and stolid obtuseness!
At one time I am straining all my poor wit to grapple in an
encounter on the knottiest mysteries of social life; at another, I
am guiding reluctant fingers over the horn-book of the most obvious
morals. Here hieroglyphics, and there pot-hooks! But as long as
there is affection in a man, why, there is Nature to begin with!
To get rid of all the rubbish laid upon her, clear back the way to
that Nature and start afresh,--that is one's only chance.

Well, by degrees I won my way, waiting patiently till the bosom,