The lads say
that they intend to prevail on American misses to receive
company in future after the manner of Jerome's wife, that
is, in bed. The gentlemen of Boston (i.e. we Feds) treat
Monsieur with cold and distant respect. They feel, and every
honest man feels, indignant at seeing this lordly
grasshopper, this puppet in prince's clothes, dashing
through the American cities, luxuriously rioting on the
property of Dutch mechanics or Swiss peasants."
This last sentence, written when he was twenty-two years old, is the
first to be found in his published letters which tells anything of the
fire that was latent in him. He was of slow growth; he was forty-eight
years of age before his powers had reached their full development.
When he had nearly completed his studies for the bar, he was again
upon the point of abandoning the laborious career of a lawyer for a
life of obscurity and ease. On this occasion, it was the clerkship of
his father's court, salary fifteen hundred dollars a year, that
tempted him. He jumped at the offer, which promised an immediate
competency for the whole family, pinched and anxious for so many
years.
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