I had soon another proof of the decisive manner in which my uncle seemed disposed to carry on the war between us. Erring, like the greater number of our young men, in their ambitious desire to enter public life prematurely, I was easily persuaded to become a candidate for the general assembly. I was now just twenty-five--at a time when young men are not yet released from the bias of early associations, and the unavoidable influence of guides, who are generally blind guides. Until thirty, there are few men who think independently; and, until this habit is acquired--which, in too many cases, never is acquired--the individual is sadly out of place in the halls of legislation. It is this premature disposition to enter into public life, which is the sole origin of the numberless mistakes and miserable inconsistencies into which our statesmen fall; which cling to their progress for ever after, preventing their performances, and baffling them in all their hopes to secure the confidence of the people. They are broken-down political hacks in the prime of life, and just at the time when they should be first entering upon the duties of the public man. Seduced, like the rest, as well by my own vanity as the suggestions of favoring friends, I permitted my name to be announced, and engaged actively in the canvass. Perhaps the feverish state of my mind, in consequence of my relations with Julia Clifford and her parents, made me more willing to adopt a measure, about which, at any other time, I should have been singularly slow and cautious. As a man of proud, reserved, and suspicious temper, I had little or no confidence in my own strength with the people; and defeat would be more mortifying than success grateful to a person of my pride. I fancied, however, that popular life would somewhat subdue the consuming passions which were rioting within my bosom; and I threw myself into the thick of the struggle with all the ardor of a sanguine temperament. To my surprise and increased vexation, I found my worthy uncle striving in every possible way, without actually declaring his purpose, in opposing my efforts and prospects. It is true he did not utter my name; but he had formed a complete ticket, in which my name was not; and he was toiling with all the industry of a thoroughgoing partisan in promoting its success. The cup which he had commended to my lips was overrunning with the gall of bitterness. Hostility to me seemed really to have been a sort of monomania with him from the first. How else was this canton procedure to be accounted for? how, even with this belief, could it be excused? His conduct was certainly one of those mysteries of idiosyncracy upon which the moral philosopher may speculate to doomsday without being a jot the wiser.