Usually, when great
powers are conferred on a man, there is also given him a strong
propensity to exercise them, sufficient to carry him through all
difficulties to the suitable sphere. Here, on the contrary, there was
a Great Eastern with only a Cunarder's engine, and it required a tug
to get the great ship round to her course.
Admitted to the bar in his twenty-third year, he dutifully went home
to his father, and opened an office in a New Hampshire village near
by, resolved never again to leave the generous old man while he lived.
Before leaving Boston, he wrote to his friend Bingham, "If I am not
earning my bread and cheese in exactly nine days after my admission, I
shall certainly be a bankrupt";--and so, indeed, it proved. With great
difficulty, he "hired" eighty-five dollars as a capital to begin
business with, and this great sum was immediately lost in its transit
by stage. To any other young man in his situation, such a calamity
would have been, for the moment, crushing; but this young man,
indifferent to _meum_ as to _tuum_, informs his brother that he can in
no conceivable way replace the money, cannot therefore pay for the
books he had bought, believes he is earning his daily bread, and as to
the loss, he has "_no uneasy sensations on that account_.
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