“The votary of a false idea, I linger in this shadowy life and feed on silent images which no eye but mine can gaze upon, till at length they are invested with the terrible circumstances of life, and breathe, and act, and form a stirring world of fate, beauty, time, death, and glory. And then, from out this dazzling wilderness of deeds, I wander forth and wake ... horrible! horrible!” “Often in reverie had I been an Alberoni, a Ripperda, a Richelieu....” “I sat in moody silence, revolving in reverie without the labour of thought....” He felt that he was not as others. He found that though at once proud and gentle, as a boy, his family were sometimes eyed askance as foreigners. He wished to frequent a public school; it was deemed unadvisable. The harder side of his nature began to assert itself. He would triumph over all, hew down every obstacle. His father suggested the University. He rejected the offer. Why waste his time in words that might prove a school for deeds? “A miserable lot is mine to feel everything and be nothing.” He was destined, appointed, reserved. As he grew older these convictions deepened. “Am I a man, and a man of strong passions and deep thoughts? And shall I, like a vile beggar, upon my knees crave the rich heritage that is my own by right?” But how? The very thought bewildered, oppressed, and embittered him. “Everything is mysterious, though I have always been taught the reverse.” In a dangerous moment he began to lay it down as a principle “that all considerations must yield to the gratification of my ambition.” Life without power, and power that he felt deserved, was intolerable. His father remonstrated. He warned him against the fatal tyranny of the imagination. “I think,” he said, “you have talents indeed for anything ... that a rational being can desire to attain; but you sadly lack judgment.” The boy replied, “I wish, sir, to influence men.... I am impressed with a most earnest and determined resolution to become a practical man. You must not judge of me by my boyish career. The very feelings that made me revolt at the discipline of schools will insure my subordination in the world. I took no interest in their petty pursuits, and their minute legislation interfered with my extended views.” In answer, he was admonished that a nature so “headstrong and imprudent” would lead to situations ridiculous and even dangerous; that his lack of regulated balance would warp his excellent instincts. The boy persisted that, if not by deeds yet by words, he would sway his fellows. “Mix in society,” rejoined his father, with a shrug of the shoulders, “and I will answer that you lose your poetic feeling; for in you, as in the great majority, it is not a creative faculty, originating in a peculiar organisation, but simply the consequence of a nervous susceptibility that is common to all.” The youth continued to fret, and brood, and calculate. He felt method within him as well as frenzy.