I well understood that to attempt rivaling Frank in matters cognate with his own department of talent, would render me only as ridiculous as an old beau who seeks to gain favor with the girls by imitating with his rouge, hair dyes, and laced waistcoats, the freshness and symmetry of youth. But I must endeavor to establish some common ground on which I and the magnificent creature at my side could meet and hold converse. I must find it in literature. In a garret over my store I had a safe and some papers conveyed, ostensibly for attention to private business. I kept my room securely locked. Thither, from time to time, I secretly carried a library of English classics, and all works of the day which received public intention. I revived all my early recollections of literature, and made myself acquainted with the lighter contemporaneous works, which are the most prolific topics of conversation in society. Under pretense of business I devoted every moment I could to my solitary chamber. Never did college student, cramming himself for examination, labor more intently than I. I stored my mind not only with words, but ideas. I committed to memory innumerable fine passages. Personally, I was well repaid for my toil. Literature is always solacing, elevating, and ennobling. The Bedouin of the desert is less of a robber and murderer while singing the songs of his national poets. My acquisitions, however, were carefully hidden. They were for future use. At present I continued to talk nothing that was beyond the scope of the newspapers. Thus some months passed. It was near the close of summer, and the gorgeous autumnal season was at hand. I designed to attempt something which would create a change in my wife's nature,--her acquired nature, to substitute some healthful exuberance for the weary listlessness which had become habitual to her. The physical is the foundation of all other departments of humanity. With a physical system of glowing health, mental or emotional or moral disease is impossible; and the converse is true, that when these exist, the physical system must deteriorate. I must then give a filip to my wife's physical vigor,--dissipate her desperateness and her love in the same manner in which a good game of billiards drives from a man the blues. I must remove all her morbidness. Where could I go but to the great mother Nature? If physical enjoyment, in connection with an appreciative view of the beauties and glories everywhere spread before humanity, on the mountains, the plains, the valleys, and the oceans, does not revive and restore, the case is hopeless. My wife was an excellent equestrian. Her theatrical experience had familiarized her with firearms. She had a cultivated taste for scenery, and some degree of skill in delineating it. Far off, then, into the prairies and the western mountains, into scenes away from the beaten track, where everything should be as dissimilar as possible from all previous life, I determined to lead her.