Later on Pierce was sent to Hancock to enter the academy. Unused to discipline, he became very homesick and walked all the way home to see his family. It was on a Sunday morning that he appeared in the yard and found that the household had gone to church. On their return, they found him sitting on a bench waiting for them. When asked the reason why he came home unannounced, he pleaded homesickness. His father was a stern disciplinarian and without a word had a horse harnessed into a chaise; Franklin was driven into the midst of a dense wood and left to walk the rest of the way back to the academy. It was a dark day and a heavy thunder shower came up, so that he was drenched to his skin by the time he reached school. In speaking of it afterwards he said: "It was the turning-point of my life. I learned the lesson that my father wished to impress upon me." At the age of sixteen he entered Bowdoin College and became one of the most popular students. Not inclined to study, the first two years of his life were spent in partial idleness, until suddenly he awoke to the value of education and was graduated with honors. Another turning-point in his life lay in the time when he first met Nathaniel Hawthorne. This meeting was in a stage-coach, in 1821, when Pierce was returning to college during his sophomore year. In the same coach also were Jonathan Cilley and Alfred Mason, both intimates then and in after years. It might be said that Pierce's political campaign commenced at college, for here he held his first civic office as chairman of the Athenean Society, also being elected captain of a little company formed in the college. There are still treasured in the college library at Brunswick, Maine, two mementoes of his college life. The one is a silhouette found in a little red book containing the pictures of the members of the class, which was made before the art of photography was known. The second is a theme that was written in Latin, one of his later works. He followed his father's career as politician, making his first stump speech in favor of the victor of New Orleans and against John Quincy Adams. He entered Congress at the age of twenty-nine and quickly rose to high political favor; he was elected to the Senate in 1837, being at that time its youngest member. During his term of office, he stood firm for his party against the opposing members, and yet so popular was he that when his hour of departure came, the senators crowded around him as though he were a personal friend, and no member of the Senate ever retired with warmer friends. Among his associates in Congress were such men as Calhoun, Wentworth, and Clay,--men who were helpful to him in his political life. He decided, however, that he had had enough of politics so he returned to his own State and took up his profession of attorney, devoting much of his time to caring for his invalid wife.