The new year came; but it brought no brightening skies to him. Lonely enough those days were! When tired of waiting in his room, he would go out and walk,--always alone. He strolled up and down the Potomac, and sometimes crossed over to the Virginia shore, and climbed the brown, wooded banks there, and listened to the clamor of the crows in the leafless oak-trees. There was something in their wild cawing, in the desolateness of the fields, in the rush of the cold river, that suited his mood. It was winter in his spirit too, just then. Sometimes he visited the halls of Congress, and saw the great legislators of those days. There was something here that fed his heart. Wintry as his prospects were, the sun still shone overhead; his courage never failed him; he never gave way to weak repining; and when he entered those halls,--when he saw the deep fire in the eyes of Webster, and heard the superb thunder of his voice,--when he listened to the witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,--when charmed by this speaker, or convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,--there was kindled a sense of power within his own breast, a fire prophetic of his future. On returning home, he would look on his table for communications, or he would ask, "Has anybody called for me to-day?" But there was never any letter; and Mrs. Markham's gentle response always was, "No one, Sir." The thirteenth of January passed,--his birthday. He was now nineteen. When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing accomplishing,--to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,--to walk the streets of a lonely city, and think of home,--these things make a birthday sad and solitary. At last his money was all gone. The prospect was more than dismal,--it was appalling. What was he to do? Should he borrow of his uncle? "Not unless it be to keep me from starvation!" was his proud resolve. Should he apply to his mother? The remembrance of what she had already done for him was as much as his heart could bear. Her image, venerable, patient, blind, was before him: he recalled the sacrifices she had made for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully appreciated all that love and devotion. For so it is: seldom, until too late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices. But when she who made them is no longer with us,--too often, alas, when she has passed forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,--we awake at once to a realization of her worth and of our loss. What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt that she at least ought to know his resources.