“‘My own doing,’ said I in bitterness, as I sat me down at the door of the wigwam. ‘My own doing!’ and the words ate into my very heart’s core. Heaven knows, had any one of them who left me, but turned his head, and looked at me then, as I sat--my head buried in my hands, my frame trembling with strong passion---he had formed a most false estimate of my feelings. In all likelihood, he would have regarded me as a man sorrowing over a lost position in society--grieved at the mistaken vanity that made him presume upon those who associated with him by grace especial, and never, on terms of equality. Nothing in the world was then farther from my heart: no, my humiliation had another source--my sorrowing penetrated into a deeper soil. I awoke to the conviction that my position was such, that even the temporary countenance they gave me by their society, was to be deemed my greatest honour, as its withdrawal should be my deepest disgrace--that these poor heartless brainless fools for whom I taxed my time, my intellect, and my means, were in the light of patrons to me. Let any man who has felt what it is to live among those on whose capacity he has looked down, while he has been obliged to pay homage to their rank--whose society he has frequented, not for pleasure nor enjoyment--not for the charm of social intercourse, or the interchange of friendly feeling, but for the mere vulgar object that he might seem to others to be in a position to which he had no claim--to be intimate, when he was only endured--to be on terms of ease, when he was barely admitted; let him sympathise with me. Now, I awoke to the full knowledge of my state, and saw myself at last in a true light. ‘My own doing!’ repeated I to myself. Would it had been so many a day since, ere I lost self-respect--ere I had felt the humiliation I now feel.” “‘You are under arrest, sir,’ said the sergeant, as with a party of soldiers he stood prepared to accompany me to the quarters. “‘Under arrest! By whose orders?’ “‘The colonel’s orders,’ said the man briefly, and in a voice that showed I was to expect little compassion from one of a class who had long regarded me as an upstart, giving himself airs unbecoming his condition. “My imprisonment, of which I dared not ask the reason, gave me time to meditate on my fortunes, and think over the vicisicitudes of my life,-- to reflect on the errors which had rendered abortive every chance of success in whatever career I adopted; but, more than all, to consider how poor were all my hopes of happiness in the road I had chosen, while I dedicated to the amusement of others, the qualities which, if cultivated for myself, might be made sources of contentment and pleasure. If I seem prolix in all this--if I dwell on these memories, it is, first, because few men may not reap a lesson from considering them; and again, because on them hinged my whole future life.