I went home thinking of Miss Darthea Peniston, and filled with desire to lead a wiser life. It was full time. My aunt’s lavish generosity had, as I have said, given me means to live freely among the officers, who were, with some exceptions, a dissolute set. To be with them made it needful to become deceitful and to frame excuses, so that, when I was supposed to be at my aunt’s, or riding, I was free that past winter to go on sleighing-parties or to frequent taverns, pleased with the notice I got from men like Montresor and the officers of the Scotch Grays. I have dwelt not at all on these scenes of dissipation. It is enough to mention them. My father was wrapped up in his business, and full of cares both worldly and spiritual; for now Friends were becoming politically divided, and the meetings were long and sometimes agitated. My good mother was neither deceived nor unconcerned. She talked to me often, and in such a way as brings tears to my eyes even now to think of the pain I gave her. Alas! it is our dearest who have the greatest power to wound us. I wept and promised, and went back to my husks and evil company. I have no wish to conceal these things from my children. It is well that our offspring when young should think us angels; but it were as well that when they are older they should learn that we have been men of like passions with themselves, and have known temptation, and have fought, and won or lost, our battles with sin. It is one of the weaknesses of nations, as well as of children, that they come to consider their political fathers as saints. I smile when I think of the way people nowadays think of our great President, as of a mild genius, incapable of being moved to anger or great mirth, a man unspotted of the world. They should have heard him at Monmouth, when Lee failed him in a time of peril, or seen him, as I have seen him, soberly merry over his wine with Knox. But some day you shall see him as my friend Jack and I saw him, and you will, I trust, think no worse of him for being as human as he was just.