But the sacrifice was to be made; and my imagination immediately grew active for my compensation, by describing a woodland home--a spot, remote from the crowd, where I should carry my household gods, and set them up for my exclusive and uninvaded worship. The whole world-wide West was open to me. A virgin land, rich in natural wealth and splendor, it held forth the prospect of a fair field and no favor to every newcomer. There it is not possible to keep in thraldom the fear less heart and the active intellect. There, no petty circle of society can fetter the energies or enfeeble the endeavors. No mocking, stale conventionalities can usurp the place of natural laws, and put genius and talent into the accursed strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I go. I remembered the late conference with my friend Kingsley, and the whole course of my reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched in half an hour. “I will go to Alabama.” Such was my resolution. I was the man to make sudden resolutions. This, however, reasoned upon with the utmost circumspection, seemed the very best that I could make. My wife, yet pure, was rescued from the danger that threatened her; I was saved the necessity of taking a life so dear to my benefactor; and the unhappy young man himself--the victim to a blind passion--having no longer in his sight the temptation which misled him, would be left free to return to better thoughts, and the accustomed habits of business and society. I had concluded upon my course in the brief interval which followed my interview with William Edgerton and my return home. The next day I saw his father. I communicated the assurance of the son, and renewed my own, that neither drunkenness nor gaming was a vice. What it was that afflicted him I did not pretend to know, but I ascribed it to want of employment; a morbid, unenergetic temperament; the fact that he was independent, and had no rough necessities to make him estimate the true nature and the objects of life; and, at the close, quietly suggested that possibly there was some affair of the heart which contributed also to his suffering. I did not deny that his looks were wretched, but I stoutly assured the old man that his parental fears exaggerated their wretchedness. We had much other talk on the subject. When we were about to separate for the day, I declared my own determination in this manner:-- “I have just decided on a step, Mr. Edgerton, which perhaps will somewhat contribute to the improvement of your son, by imposing some additional tasks upon him. I am about to emigrate for the southwest.” “You, Clifford? Impossible! What puts that into your head?” It was something difficult to furnish any good reason for such a movement. The only obvious reason spoke loudly for iny remaining where I was.